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Chapter Text

     HER daddy used to tell her tales, strange ones, about folks who disappeared and went on missing. Said the land was hungry and once it took you, it never spit you back out.

On nights when the wind forgot to blow, when the animals held their tongues and even the crickets fell silent, as if the earth itself were holding its breath, he would draw the curtains tight, murmur a word or two of prayer, and tuck her gently into bed.

He would start, “Like a being of two,” and whisper as if conspiring, “Nalusa Falaya slithers like both man and snake, longgg and black, like made of smoke.”

He leaned in closer and continued in his hushed tones, “He came for those who would wander too far from the light of the fire.”

“And then what, Daddy?” she whispered, her small voice coming out even smaller, her small hands gripping tightly at the blanket tucked underneath her chin. 

“Then, he waited. Didn’t run, didn’t charge. Just watched. He’d slip through the trees, and if you stared too long into the forest, listened too hard to what he whispered in the dark, then…,” he paused, shifting his body from the edge of the bed closer to her still one. 

“Then what, Daddy?” she urged again.

"Then he don’t get you fast. Nah, he waits, real quiet. And then, BAM! He gets ya!" he yelled, hands shooting out for dramatic effect. Every story, she’d shriek and jump. And every time, he’d laugh in response in that deep, brassy way that had the ability to calm her down.

“Some say that’s what happens to ones that go missin’ and don’t come back. Not dead, or truly gone, but just taken and never buried,” he finished on this particular tale.

Always a curious child, this was never enough of an answer for her. “Well, where do they go?” she questioned, her wide eyes, the color of earth after rain, staring hopefully up at her father for answers.

“Ain’t always about where,” he finally said. “Oftentimes, it’s what they are after.” 

He reached down, brushing away a curly black lock from her forehead. “Thing is, moonbeam, Nalusa Falaya don’t need chains, don’t need screams or tears. It just needs you forgotten. Just need you not remembered.” And he stared off into the distance, to a place not here, not there, and not recognized by her. 

She opened her mouth to ask more, but he kissed the crown of her head and stood up. She frowned in disappointment, but felt the heaviness of sleep surrounding her. “Some tales ain’t meant to be chased after, it’s best that way. Now, bed. Night Mitena. Chi hollo li,” he whispered.

“Chi hollo li , Daddy,” she whispered back, looking up at her father as if he hung the moon and stars for her. 

Their words of adoration and devotion were interrupted by the groaning of the bedroom door, and a pop of wild curls and mocha skin. “Now, I know damn well you ain’t telling Tena these scary stories again, Yakni.”

“Not scary stories, my light. Stories of my people,” he lightheartedly rebounded.

“Mm hmm, scary stories of your people. Let our child get to bed. Night sweetie,” her mother called out softly from the doorway before leaving and sparing a few more moments between father and daughter. And with slow steps and a twinkle in his eye, Yakni took in the sight of Mitena lost away to the night clouds, stars, and moon before crossing the small expanse of the room, and softly clicking the door shut. 

A couple of months later, Mitena turned eight.

And a couple days after that, her daddy was gone.

No one really knew what happened to him. Each rumor spewed by community members carried its own weight, soft-spoken, never uttered in confidence, and never uttered the same way twice. 

Sometimes the police took ‘em . Often he walked into a swamp and never came back. Before the drugs took her, her mother would murmur he went into the land.

But one thing was for sure—Mitena never saw him again, he was gone and wasn’t coming back. 

Still, days after his disappearance, the twisting of truth stirred inside Mitena. The grief and fear were present, but also a strange stillness that came with knowing. Like the smell of rain right before a storm. Like the shake of a bell before it rang. 

Her daddy, who hung the stars and the moon for her, was no longer in this realm. Not dead, not living. Just somewhere not here.

It wasn’t until she was fourteen, when the anger and sadness never truly passed but just dulled, when Mitena began to realize the purpose of her father’s stories, of tribal tales. 

What stories filled the silence when there were no answers? What happened when the truth was too painful to speak plainly? 

It was at that moment she thought her father wrong. Some stories weren’t meant to be chased after, but answered.

Chapter Text

May 2009, Pearl River Reservation - Mississippi

     THE morning began like it always did. 

The coffee bitter and burnt, abandoned too long in the plastic carafe. Thin curtains barely held back the bright rays of the Mississippi sun, their frayed edges clinging to the window since the ‘90s. The sticky linoleum curled at its corners, yellowed from when the fridge leaked and was never repaired.

And there was her grandmother, sat in her favorite rocking chair, humming something older than language over the low hum of daytime TV and the clinking of her knitting needles. Occasionally, the static would crackle, and the humming would pause and resume again once the signal of the TV would start up once more.

Mitena would settle into her go-to spot on the couch, left to her grandmother and never too far from an arm's length. The worn blue fabric of the couch cradled her folded leg, brushing bare skin where her blue shorts rode up. 

Late morning light slipped through, catching on the dark curls that spilled down her back. Her eyes, her mother’s eyes, warm brown and heavy with quiet knowing, flicked toward her grandmother’s humming. It was strong, steady, like a promise, and unshaken even by illness. Each hum carried weight, like it held stories too sacred for words.

The faint smell of menthol lingered in the small living room, along with the occasional gut-wrenching cough that traveled from Nana Hushi. It hurt Mitena to listen to. Sometimes, when the hacking became too much for Nana and she couldn’t hide the pain, she muttered prayers under breath, Shilombish okla ish anoli, snatches of words Mitena would half understand and could never be spoken by her tongue. 

A floorboard groaned as the trailer shifted in the heat, and still, the humming went on. 

“Mit, the day is too nice to pass up to stay inside with an old bat like me. Go outside and enjoy the day!” Hushi motioned her hand toward the door, dramatically and full of life, like everything she did.

“Nana, I’d rather stay inside with an old bat like you. Besides, who else is gonna keep you company?” The southern twang coming through in sharp little edges, softened only by the teasing in her voice. 

“No dice, child. Now scoot on! A young and beautiful twenty-somethin’ like you shouldn’t be cooped up all day. Back in my day, I was a dancin’ queen—hittin’ every dance spot and catchin’ the eyes of all the dimes. That oughta be you, my child. Go on, enjoy life!”

“Nana, not sure if you noticed, but I’m not exactly a dancin’ queen. I’m more of a ‘sit here and watch Days of Our Lives with you’ kinda gal,” she said, not looking up, fingers fidgeting with a loose thread on her tank top.

Nana narrowed her eyes, not buying it. “Hm. What’s the real reason you’re avoidin’ the outside like the plague passin’ out handshakes?”

Mitena turned toward her grandmother and let out a deep breath before rushing the truth out. “Bobby thinks just ’cause he got a kiss we goin’ steady. So now I’m avoidin’ him like he’s the plague. Crappy daytime TV and you are my out.”

Nana snorted and kept on rocking, needles clicking in rhythm. “Boys always think one kiss earns ‘em a lease. Back in my day, we had to swat ‘em off like June bugs.”

“Nana!” Mitena gasped, laughing. “Help me! Where’s that sage advice you’re known for?”

“I am helping you, baby. Which is why, if you don’t move that pretty little butt out this door and tell him to kick rocks, I’ll do it for you,” Hushi said, her voice firm beneath the sugar.

Mitena stood with a groan and headed for the screen door, which rattled on its hinges, threatening to come off every time the wind hit it right. A threat from Hushi Lewis was a promise delivered.

“Alright, alright, I’m goin’. No need to sic the dogs and the bite,” Mitena yelled over her shoulder.

“Be back in time for dinner!” 

☾ *** ☾

“And then the poor sucker started weepin’ right in front of everyone at Matt’s Grill, by the Coke dispenser, no less! I’m tellin’ ya, I honestly didn’t know what to do,” Mitena said, shaking her head as she retold the embarrassing tale of let-down and missed romance.

She and Lily sat shoulder to shoulder on the cracked vinyl bench of their favorite booth at the local diner, while Samanta sat across from them, hunched over a basket of curly fries, wiping away tears of laughter. The three of them, coworkers, friends, and fellow nurses bound by the tough rhythms of their rural community hospital, found solace in this ritual of greasy food and shameless oversharing.

Drying her cheeks, Samanta cleared her throat and twirled a strand of her light brown hair around her finger. “No, but seriously, what’s wrong with Bobby? He seems like a sweet guy!”

“Oh! I know the answer!” Lily said, raising her hand like a student desperate to be called on, just as Mitena replied, “He just doesn’t have it.”

Mitena rolled her eyes as their answers overlapped.

Samanta glanced between the two dark-haired girls, visibly confused. “Um...what’s it?”

Lily chuckled, taking a long sip of her coke while Mitena paused, staring into her straw like it might offer her the answer.

What was it?

I want someone who looked at me like I hung the moon and the stars—sure. But more than that, someone who made me feel seen without having to explain herself. Who stayed in the silences. Who didn’t treat me like something temporary while they waited for their real life to begin.

She shrugged instead. “Oh, ya know... someone who seems serious about showing up. Not just for the good parts, but for the real stuff too.”

They nodded, and their laughter faded into a comfortable silence, replaced by the low hum of the jukebox in the corner and the familiar clatter of dishes from behind the counter. The diner, with its sun-faded menus and walls lined with old football team photos, had been a second home since she was a kid. Everyone knew everyone, sometimes too well. It was safe, familiar. But lately, it felt like a favorite sweater she was starting to outgrow: still soft, still hers, but a little too tight in the shoulders.

Samanta opened her mouth to change the subject. “Oh! Did you hear about Dr. Advins? He and—”

☾ *** ☾

After lunch, all three split the bill like custom, Mitena over-tipping, like always, and Lily taking everyone’s leftovers in a to-go box, like always. All departed from the diner lot into their separate cars and made promises to meet up again the week after.

She climbed into her dented, sun-faded ’98 Ford Explorer, Betty, as she affectionately called her. The engine sputtered awake, shaking the knick-knacks and tchotchkes on the dash. Then she eased out of the lot and turned onto the long, cracked road back to the reservation.

The land stretched wide and silent. The Black Eyed Peas song had been turned off long ago, and replaced by the sounds of the sprawling land breezing in through the rolled down window. 

Dogwood trees. Thinning shrubs. Peeling Jesus Saves signs. Roadside shrines to gods rarely recognized. All braided together into something worn and familiar. A hodgepodge of modern rez living.

The rez carried loss like a second skin, and everyone knew at least one person who’d gone missing, locked up, or faded too young. But still, like sunflowers under the harsh Mississippi sun, the community pressed on, brought together by powwows, social dances, and a collective and stubborn will to thrive in spite of darkness and grief in their bones.

Betty whizzed by abandoned houses, rusted mailboxes, and the half-burned church that was still fundraising for repairs. No one really knew how it caught fire.

Pulling into the dirt path of their driveway, Mitena spotted the warm glow of lights through the trailer windows. Nana was up. And if the open screen door and the scent of casserole and frybread wafting in the air was any indication, it was supper time.

As Mitena trudged up the rickety front steps, the welcome was sharp and immediate—“You’re late.” From the top of the stairs, and past the screen, Hushi was ready to deliver her usual quip, along with a look that was worse for wear. She’s looking worse these days, Mitena thought sullenly. 

“Sorry, Nana,” Mitena replied bashfully, smiling down at her stained white sneakers. With Nana Hushi, it was better not to give an excuse, just a ready apology. With the bashful look, Nana softened, clearly tired and unwilling to say so, but always ready to forgive her favorite, and only, granddaughter and descendant.

“Well, what’cha waitin’ for, child? An invitation? Wash up for sup’,” she said, already turning away.

Mitena smiled in reply and walked through the doorway, past the set table, and into the small shared bath to scrub her hands clean. With the task done, they sat down for dinner, the murmur of nighttime local news whispering softly in the background.

As routine. As usual.

Small talk about her lunch, upcoming work, and community gossip was sprinkled in with TV noise and the clanking of silverware, one of the few items truly cherished by Nana, against dinner plates.

“Elder Johnson came on by earlier today while you were gone to give you a holler,” Nana muttered a few seconds after a particularly large bite, eyes fixed on her plate. 

“Oh, really? What’d he want?”

“Just wanted to thank ya for helpin’ out his wife after that faintin’ spell last week. Brought some cookies for ya. I ate a couple already,” Hushi said, pointing her fork behind her, where a platter of sugar cookies sat on the counter, a few clearly missing from the pile.

Mitena chuckled, brushing off the praise. “He didn’t need to thank me for that. It was near the hospital. I was just doin’ my job, that’s all.”

“Speakin’ of jobs,” Nana paused, clearing her throat after a beat and still not looking up from her plate, “...I heard from Andrea.”

Mitena’s fork paused midair. “What? ” she hissed.

“She called yesterday while you was at work. Said she got herself a gig down in Oklahoma. And even checked herself in at a wellness retreat. Or was it a clinic? Who knows.” Hushi trailed on nervously.

“Right,” Mitena muttered, stabbing a piece of casserole a tad too hard, her usual sunny disposition clouded by the news.

Nana sighed, finally looking up, and made the quick decision to rip off the rest of the bandaid. “Said she might…stop by in a couple weeks for a visit. Maybe. Didn’t sound too sure of herself.”

At that, Mitena sharply looked up. “When is she ever?”

Rebutting, but not unkindly, and with a softness tinged by tiredness, Hushi replied, “She still your mama, child. I know she done wrong. But blood is blood.”

“Not by choice. She lost that right when she picked those damn drugs over her child, over the little girl who lost her daddy.”

“She lost a husband too, Mitena.” Silence touched every corner of the room, and it seemed not even the noise of the TV could reach through it. 

“I was still just a child who lost her daddy. Then her mama. Then just dumped her with daddy’s mama.” Mitena’s voice softened. “I never got answers on why she left.”

At the mention of her only son, Hushi grew distant, her face closing up. His disappearance still weighed heavy. “You always chasin’ after answers, baby. But not everything’s meant to be unearthed.”

“Daddy said the same thing too, long ago.”

Abruptly, Hushi stood from her chair. “I think I’ll clear up the table now. It’s gettin’ late, and I’m awfully tired.” As she moved, she stumbled, catching herself on the edge of the table. 

“Nana! You okay?”

Mitena rushed around the table to catch Nana’s elbow before she could fall further. “I’ve been saying you need to go to the hospital! You’re not well.” She looked her grandmother over. Mitena had passed her grandmother’s 5’2” frame years ago, and now she stood nearly two inches taller.

“Oh, hush! I ain’t goin’ to no damn hospital. I’m alright. Just a dizzy spell.” She straightened, collecting herself into the version of Hushi the town knew. Strong, unmovable. “You mind clearing the mess, baby? I need to rest these weary bones.”

“Of course, Nana,” Mitena replied gently. “You go on and have a rest.” Nana nodded and walked slowly down the narrow hallway, in the back of the trailer, toward her room. 

“Nana?” Mitena called out before Hushi could turn the knob that was in her grasp. 

“I’m sorry for bringing up Daddy,” is what she wanted to say. Instead, she hesitated, and quietly offered, “Have a good night. I love you.”

“I love you too, Mit,” Hushi replied with a faint smile. She turned the knob and disappeared into her room, the door shutting softly behind her.

Mitena stood alone in the kitchen for what seemed like hours. Most likely, it was five minutes. She let the quiet settle around her like a lull in a melody for a beat longer. She moved to clear the table, scraping casserole remaining on plates into the trash, and stacking plates in the sink to be washed. 

As she reached to grab a dish towel from the drawer beside the sink, something caught her eye. Tucked towards the back of the drawer, where a stack of old mail and community bulletins lingered, lay a folded piece of deep red and white cloth. 

Hesitatingly, as if made from glass, she pulled it out carefully from the bottom of the pile. It was small, possibly a handkerchief, delicate and faded from time. Embroidered along the edges were tiny flowers she didn’t recognize. The fabric buzzed faintly in her hand, like static. I’m imagining things. Probably tired.

Etched on the underside were symbols, unfamiliar to her, deliberate, old-fashioned, almost ceremonial. The cloth was worn at the corners, as if it had passed through many hands before reaching hers. It was pretty.

But something in her chest stirred. She had felt this before.

In the way her skin prickled like the stillness before a storm.

In the feeling she got around certain people, like walking into a room and knowing a goodbye was already growing in their shadow.

In the dreams that didn’t feel like hers, and memories that didn’t belong to her but clung like dew to her skin.

Hushi used to call her a ‘keeper ’ when she was younger, though she’d never explained what it meant, or uttered it again after her father’s disappearance. 

And her mama, before she went mad with the drugs and liquor and hightailed it out of dodge, used to whisper about the women in her line of freedwomen who saw death coming before it knocked, who could feel loss before it landed.

“It runs through us,” she had said once, eyes distant, on what Mitena thought was the liquor. “On both sides. Just different rivers. You’re where they meet.”

Maybe this was what she meant.

Maybe the handkerchief in her hand knew this truth too. 

Chapter Text

     IT was supposed to be a usual Sunday morning routine. 

Wake up.

Stumble into the bathroom. Wash up. Get dressed.

Greet Nana with a kiss on the cheek.

Grab a mug of coffee from the pot. Sit at the table for a towering plate of Nana’s blueberry pancakes.

But it wasn’t the usual. 

After washing up and dressing, Mitena lingered at the edge of the open kitchen-living space.

Nana wasn’t there. No smile, no kiss. Just the soft tick of the wall clock and the hush of a too-quiet house. Thinking nothing of it, yet, she stepped across the threshold into the kitchen and reached for the coffee pot.

Empty.

Now things were amiss. 

The burnt coffee scent, always there, always slightly overcooked, was gone. Rain or shine, joy or grief, that bitter perfume greeted her every morning.

Mitena slowly set the pot back in its place. She stood at the counter, and closed her eyes. Feeling. Sensing. Reaching. And what answered back spilled cold into her bones, like ice water in her veins. The hairs on her neck stood tall, bristling.

Decay.

The moment just after breath leaves the body. Eyes glazing over. Stillness. A quiet dread.

Her eyes snapped open. Without hesitation, she tore through the house, past the kitchen, the bathroom, her bedroom, until she reached the end of the hall.

She turned the knob and slammed the door open. It banged hard against the wall. She didn’t flinch. Her eyes locked on the bed. In the dim room, with the curtains drawn tight and only a sliver of morning light bleeding through the dust, lay Hushi.

Peaceful. Eyes closed. The kind of stillness that only comes when someone knows. When they’re ready.

She wore her favorite green mumu nightgown. Arms folded gently at her sides. Her face was calm, free.

Mitena stepped forward. Slowly. Barely breathing. She paused halfway through the room.

There was a sound. Wailing. Screeching. Inhuman. It filled the space, sharp and unbearable. She didn’t know where it came from. She only knew she needed it to stop.

It wasn’t until she dropped to her knees beside the bed, her face pressed to her grandmother’s cooling cheek, her tears soaking into Hushi’s skin, that she realized it was her.

The sound was hers.

Guttural. Raw. Wails torn from a place no one was meant to reach. The grief of a girl who had already known too much loss. The howl of someone who felt it coming and still couldn’t stop it. The pain of goodbye. The ache of knowing the body was here, but the soul was already far, far away.

Thirty minutes must’ve passed, but she didn’t call anyone. Not yet. 

She climbed into bed beside her, careful not to disturb the stillness, the peace. Her Nana’s arm was cool against her own warm one. She stayed like that for a while. An hour. Maybe more. Maybe less.

Time was a stranger to her in the room.

With her father’s disappearance, there had been no body. No peace. No moment like this. Just a vanishing act that cut deep to those who loved him. An everlasting hollow ache that never left.

In this moment, completely different from the loss of her father, she had closure. No lingering questions or confusion. And she didn’t want to let go just yet. 

☾ *** ☾

One Week Later

The day had been filled with choruses of condolences, sympathy, and loss. 

Andrea hadn’t bothered to show up, but that didn’t surprise Mitena.

The community, struck by the loss of an elder, became a monolith of shared grief and heartache. Hushi Lewis, foundational pillar, keeper of tribal knowledge, grounding presence, had been uprooted and plucked from the earth. It would take time to recover.

Her granddaughter, still beside herself, stumbled back to the trailer in a black, quarter-sleeved, tea-length dress with delicate embroidery at the cuffs and hem. Conservative, somber. Her hair was twisted back into a low bun, pinned with her grandmother’s aged silver clip. She wore plain black kitten heels, scuffed from the soft earth beneath the folding chairs at the wake.

The trailer, once warm and humming with love, now felt like a hollowed-out shell. An imposter of itself. She dropped her keys on the counter. Let them clatter.

She sat at the dining table, despondent. Clutched in her hand was the wake bulletin. It somberly read:

~

In loving remembrance and celebration of life

Hushi Sarah Lewis 

Adored mother, grandmother, and community leader. 

April 6th 1940 - May 8th 2009

~

It felt oppressive in her hands, like it weighed more than it ought to. She dropped it on the table, unable to handle the presence it brought to the room.

Slumped in the dining chair, Mitena stood. Unaware of where her body was guiding her. She found herself in front of the kitchen sink. What am I doing here?

Her fingers trembled. Then stilled, as if something beyond her was guiding them. She reached for the drawer beside the sink. With sudden calm, she opened it and dug her hand through piles of old letters, clutter, and forgotten kitchen tools. Buried beneath the junk, she found the old handkerchief again.

She hadn’t remembered putting it back in the drawer. But there it was. Quiet. Waiting. Humming.

The fabric buzzed stronger now, like it remembered her. Like it had been waiting for her grief, and for a flicker of lingering hope. Hope for what? She had no clue.

She turned it over. Where she once saw strange, unrecognizable symbols, now sat faint words stitched in deep, rust-colored thread. Uneven, but familiar.

For when it awakens in you.

What loves us can be a curse. But it chose us.

Her stomach flipped. What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

She stared, confused at its message, its sudden appearance, and whether this was meant for her. But more than anything, she was confused by the insistent buzzing.

But then, she started to feel it.

The static on her skin. The knowing, heavy and ancient, tucked beneath her ribs. 

And the buzzing turned violent. Into electrocution, like lightning striking her flesh. 

This time she remembered her screams. The vivid and piercing pain that it produced. And then suddenly, nothing.

Before she could catch her breath, the handkerchief began to glow. It shined brightly, as if it had been bathed in the morning light. And the brighter it shone, the more the edges of her vision shimmered, blurred. 

And the world around her went away.

Chapter Text

May 1932, Choctaw Homelands Region - Mississippi

     MITENA wasn’t entirely sure what led her towards the drawer, only that there was a desperate ache behind it. One that had started in her chest and settled into something deeper, and more frenzied. Something older than she could put a name to. Like the grief that accumulated from the vanishing of her father, her mother's abandonment, Hushi’s death, had all pooled into one dense matter and cracked her open just wide enough to allow something else to pour in. 

Once her fingers wrapped around that cloth, she knew it was her call for purpose. Calling her to not just remember, but to follow.

The air shifted. The walls of her familiar and restrictive trailer rippled away like a mirage in a desert. 

Scent mixed and bled into the room, Nana’s frybread, no -  sweetgrass and soot. And the floor gave out, or maybe she did with reality warping into something both new and old.

Next came the darkness, which bent into light. 

☾ *** ☾

She came to with a sharp inhale. Gasping as if all air that escaped her had surged back in, greedy and violent.

Disorientated and reeling, Mitena blinked against the sun and against its unrelenting heat. She wasn’t sure she could trust her senses, so she did the only thing she could: breathe. Gasp on shallow, ragged breaths, beneath the blaze of the sun above. The light was too bright, blinding. The silence too complete. 

Flat on her back, the scratchy grass beneath her body felt coarse and itchy against her exposed skin. She was in a field? Or maybe beside a road. The images of the world around her hadn’t come into focus yet. But one thing was clear, she didn’t remember leaving the trailer.

With enough breaths to steady herself, she sat up on shaking limbs, clutching her stomach as the nausea rose fast and hot. She turned and retched into the grass to the right of her. Her throat burned, and the effort sent a fresh wave of ache across her body. Though, the dizziness began to recede, and for that she was grateful.

When she finally dared to look around, she found no trace of home. No trailer. No hum of traffic. No nearby neighbors calling across fences. 

Just miles upon miles of open land, a dirt road that disappeared into the trees, and the sharp scent of sweetgrass on the breeze.

Then, her hand. Still clutched tightly within her palm, damp with hand sweat, was the handkerchief. Its condition just as it had been when she pulled it from the drawer, worn and soft.

Looking down, she noticed the black cotton dress she had worn to Nana’s wake, now dirt-stained and clinging to her sweat-damp skin. It was crumpled and creased, likely from her time on the ground, and somehow looked even more noticeable in the open air than it had in the dimness of the trailer.

The wind shifted, and along with it carried more scents than just the sweetgrass. In it woodsmoke, faint but there. As if it was coming somewhere further off. And beneath that, something heavier. Molasses? Blood? The combination made her stomach churn again in warning.

She struggled to her feet, one foot grounded then the other, aching and unsteady. Mitena brushed the dirt off her dress, removed one black kitten heel to shake out the rocks lodged inside, and readied herself. One shaky step at a time, she made her way toward the road. 

The quiet was off-putting. It sharpened her focus, and made her surroundings feel uncanny. How everything looked familiar and not at the same time. The road she recognized, but there were no tire tracks on the dirt. No telephone poles lining the edge of the road. No distinct sounds of planes overhead, or engines down below. 

What was left was just the familiar yet foreign hum of cicadas, birdsong, and the wind whispering through the tall summergrass. 

Nothing made sense. She turned in circles, scanning the horizon. But only more trees and distant hills came into view. 

Mitena must’ve followed along the dirt road for what felt like hours, but the sun hadn’t shifted much up above. Each step was becoming heavier, slower. Until finally, off in the distance—a figure.

Far off, just where the curve of the road met the trees. Small at first, but the closer it approached, the larger it grew. She felt immediate relief. Or would have, if not the emerging details that gave her pause.

He couldn’t have been more than thirteen. Fifteen max. Covered in patched overalls, dark hair slicked with sweat, barefoot. 

She first assumed he was an ungroomed runaway, but the longer she stared, the more wrong that observation felt. The boy was well-fed. Healthy, even. 

They stopped a few yards away on the road, his eyes narrowed at her appearance. Her dress, not too different from the nicer dresses of mourning he’d seen before, was…odd. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Her whole presence put him on edge, but that didn’t deter the boy from speaking first. Maybe it was the curiosity of a new figure in town.

“You a river girl?” he asked. “Don’t see many of y’all dressed like that.” His voice was high and suspicious, but somehow altogether respectful.

Mitena blinked at him, still unsteady. “I—yeah. Yes. I’m from round here,” she said, the confirmation feeling like a lie on her tongue, bitter and hard to swallow. “Just got turned round.”

The boy frowned even deeper, his tan skin wrinkling around his eyes, “I ain’t never seen you here before.”

She gulped and stared at the ground. For that, she had no answer. 

“You alright? You look sick,” he added, stepping closer, sympathy now clouding his features.

She gave a delicate shake of her head. “No. Just…dizzy. I think I need some water.”

He nodded, chewing the inside of his cheek in thought, as if weighing the options before finally deciding. “Well, c’mon then,” he jerked his chin sharply in the direction of the curve on the road. 

“My aunt and uncle’s place ain’t far from here. They got a pump out back. We’ll get you sorted.” He turned, checking every so often to make sure she followed along.   

Mitena hesitated for a moment, then pushed forward following the strangely dressed youth. What other options do I have here?

As the boy turned his back once more, she glanced down at the cloth still clenched tightly in her hand, then quickly tucked it into the cup of her bra. She wasn’t sure why she did it. The handkerchief was ordinary and inconspicuous in nature. Pretty, but plain. Still, something inside of her insisted it needed hiding.

They walked in silence for about a mile. The boy’s bare feet slapped against the packed dirt of the road. 

Meanwhile, Mitena felt the wrongness of the world around seep into her bones. Her shoulders refused to relax. Familiar, but off. Like a dream slipping through her fingers after the moments of wake.

The pair turned off the main road, following a path off into a clearing where the summergrass grew impossibly tall than she thought allowed. A house sat ahead. It appeared sturdy, wooden, and once-white crisp paint now peeled from its slidings. 

It looked remote as far as the eye could see, and lacked what she had expected. No numerous tire tracks on dirt road, plastic chairs, or crushed soda cans. Just no signs of the clutter of modern life.

Voices drifted from the side of the small house, one deep, one light and airy. Both spoke in the same tongue. Choctaw. 

But it was wrong, all wrong. The cadence strange. No English mixed in, like Nana used to do, And the voices, completely unfamiliar. It sounded careful, clean, somehow older. Shrieks and shrills of children’s laughter joined the sounds.

Then she saw the truck. Parked away from the bustle of domestic living. Smooth-bodied, ebony black. Dust coated the hood in a way that said it was used regularly, and not just for show. Showcasing whitewall tires with gold trim, the Ford pickup model was something she saw only in photos of history books. She slowed, her chest tightening. 

Then came the people. The boy in overalls also slowed, confused by her hesitation.

The voices came closer, and soon did its owners. 

An older man and woman, maybe both in their forties, stepped into view. Each was dressed in garments that looked handmade, hand-stitched, and handled with care. 

The man, with dark trousers held by suspenders, wore a collared and dusty blue button-up shirt yellowed by the sun and sweat. His long hair neatly braided down his back, and a leather band encircling his wrist with symbols unrecognizable by Mitena. 

The petite woman beside him had a face weathered by time and sun, but eyes sharp. Focused and suspicious, directly on her. Her long green cotton skirt and white blouse were softened by an abundance of bead and shell necklaces layered across her chest. They clinked softly together with each step, as both man and woman approached Mitena and the boy next to her.

Like the car, they hadn’t donned the outfits for nostalgia. It wasn’t regalia, like for ceremonial purposes within the rez. This wasn’t a festival, not with the secluded location and the worn materials of the outfits. 

No, this was just a normal day for the couple. Either they're really into roleplaying life in the 1900s, or I’m in some deep shit.

Even more unsettling were the looks they were giving her. Guarded, cautious, like a threat had appeared before them.

Behind them, the chorus of young children she heard earlier emerged. Three children, two girls and one boy, varying in age, but the oldest not appearing past eight, were sending curious looks. Not hostile, like the older couple, but puzzled. Each child was barefoot, dusty from possibly playing outside, and dressed in simple light cotton clothes. One boy wore a faded vest over a frayed shirt. The girl tightly clutched a cornhusk doll, dressed in a simple white cotton gown, to her body. 

The man stepped forward first, his posture rigid. His voice, when it came, was gravelly and slow, and spoken in Choctaw. Pure and unblended. “Chi pisa la chike? ”

With no clipped phrasing, no English filler, or borrowed slang, Mitena was unable to decipher the words. At the moment, she had never felt more apart from her people. Less than, and only half Choctaw. Mixed with the blood of a Black woman who also didn’t belong and treated as other.

While the meaning escaped her, his tone didn’t. Accusatory and wary. 

Mitena’s throat dried, and she blinked, switching instinctively to English. “I—I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to trespass. I just—” She looked over at the boy beside her, as if for protection from the harsh looks, but he stood quietly, also curious to see what she would utter. “I’m from round here, just found myself in a bit of a bind.”

That got a reaction.

The woman, quiet initially, tilted her head scanning Mitena from head to toe. She stepped forward with furrowed brows. “You Choctaw?” she asked, her hesitant English sounding unused for a while. She glanced not just at Mitena’s strange clothes, but her tanner skin tone, the slope of her nose, dark curlier strands of her hair that had long slipped from its updo.

“Don’t look like the families round here.” the woman said softly, not cruelly, just plainspoken. “You got the face of river folk, maybe. But maybe more.”

The man grunted in agreement, crossing his arms. “Definitely something else in you,” he said in Choctaw. This Mitena understood, and caught the word lusa —Black. Mitena stiffened. 

She wasn’t new to the looks given by the couple in front of her. Back home, it was glances in church or aunties muttering cruel remarks about mixed blood behind fans. But this time it wasn’t muttering. This was naming. Naming her as not as whole. 

“I am Choctaw,” she said, voice firmer now, shoulders squared. “My grandmother raised me not far from here. Her name is Hushi.” A pause. “Hushi Lewis.”

The man and woman immediately exchanged looks. “Lewis,” the man repeated, rolling it like something half-remembered, with undertones of pain. “…Ain’t heard that name in some time.”

The woman’s gaze softened as she asked, “And your...other people?” Mitena hesitated. “My mama’s kin are Black. From Mississippi too.”

The silence that followed her confession wasn’t hostile, just heavy and uncomfortable. Each person measuring her words in their own way. Mitena most of all.

Chapter Text

     IT was the boy in overalls who finally broke the silence. 

“Found her out by the old grove,” he said. “Nearby the creek. Looked lost, real pale. Like she’d been walkin’ a while, Aunt Alice.”

The woman, Alice , frowned, her eyes narrowing further as she studied Mitena.

“Alone?”

In response, Mitena gave a stiff nod. The dryness in her throat suddenly unbearable.

“You got people nearby?” Alice asked.

A pause. Then, “No.” The word tilted up at the end, like a question more than an answer. She wasn’t sure herself.

“Hm.” She turned toward the boy beside Mitena and addressed him sternly, “Jonah, go grab…” Alice turned toward Mitena, pausing, waiting for a name.

“Mitena. My name is Mitena.” She offered softly. Some part of her was grateful to share even a sliver of herself in this strange haze of not knowing. Of still trying to uncover answers.

Alice’s nod was small, but not unkind. “Go grab Mitena some water. She’s lookin’ a little parched.” At that, Mitena instinctively brushed her fingers over her dry, cracked lips.

She was quietly glad to put a name to the boy who had found her. Jonah took off toward the back of the house.

Another silence followed. 

The older man had yet to speak again. He stood slightly behind and to the left of Alice, broad arms crossed loosely over his chest, still as a statue. His eyes, dark and unreadable, flicked between Mitena and Alice—a watching, protective presence behind, who Mitena assumed, his wife.

Alice turned her head slightly toward him, as if in a silent conference. Then back to Mitena.

“You mentioned your grandmother was a Lewis?” She said, more statement than question. “That your last name?”

Mitena gave a short nod. “Yes, ma’am. Mitena Lewis.”

Alice paused, her brow furrowed in concentration, something thoughtful crossing over her face.

“Ain’t been many Lewis’ around here in a long while,” she murmured. “Way I heard it, most of ‘em got pushed out years back, and sent west to Oklahoma. One or two came back after, but folks got scattered all around. Ain’t that right, Arthur?”

The man beside Alice gave a quiet grunt before his eyes drifted toward the small home where Jonah had gone, and to where the three children, who had long lost interest in the newcomer, had started to play tag a yard or two away. His features softened at the sight.

Alice shifted her stance slightly, and a flicker of remembrance painted her comely features. “Although…had a man pass through, year or two back. Said he was a Lewis. Was headed west, and didn’t stay long. Didn’t get a good look at him either, just remember the name.” 

Mitena’s face scrunched, but she said nothing. She didn’t know what to make of the information. Plus, there were more pressing things to figure out.

Jonah came running back to the group of adults, carefully holding with both hands a metal cup, dented on one side. When he reached Mitena, he held out the cup of water to her with a bright smile. “Here ya’ go, ma’am.”

She exchanged a smile of her own, and took hold of the cup with a sense of urgency. Cool metal met her lips, and she took ferocious gulps as if her life depended on it. Trickles of water escaped past the cup, down her chin and neck, and onto the warm ground. Once done with the drink, she rushed to wipe her mouth with her arm.

Alice and Arthur looked on with a mixture of amusement and concern. Jonah looked like a fit of laughter would take over, but to his credit, he held back. “You need another cup, ma’am?” he asked.

“If ya’ll wouldn’t mind, that would be much appreciated,” she bashfully replied. The adults gave Jonah a nod. 

He carefully took the cup from her hands and ran off in the same direction as before. 

Mitena’s eyes followed him, but her gaze drifted. Past the car, past the playing children, and past the porch. Her eyes hyperfocused on one unassuming item.

A calendar . Nailed to the outer wall of the house, just beneath the awning. The edges curled from weather and sun, JJ’s General Store decoratively printed across the top, and a rusting horseshoe tacked above it for good luck. And in bold block print?

MAY 1932. 

Her breath caught.

She moved past Alice and Arthur, ignoring their confused looks following her figure, and took a couple more steps forward in the direction of the calendar. 

Climbing up the porch, she stood a step away from the crinkled paper. She took another step forward, heart thudding in her chest. Her eyes zeroed in, unable to look away. She read it again. And again. And again. 

MAY 1932. And x-marked in faded pencil was the 15th. 

May 15th, 1932.  

The world tilted. 

No, no, no. FUCK. 

She reached out, as if touching the paper would change what it stated. As if checking it was real. But her fingers never made it. The dizziness came fast and sharp, her knees buckling beneath her. 

A sharp gasp from Alice. A shout, Jonah’s voice? Arthur?

Then the floor rushed up to meet her. 

☾ *** ☾

The second time Mitena opened her eyes, the world was softer. No harsh light or intense heat beaming upon her. Just dark.

Not quite pitch black. There was a low flicker from the oil lamp on a table beside her, casting long and golden shadows on the wooden walls. Somewhere outside, the calls of the night bird called once and twice. Low and mournful, and the trees whispered their protected secrets to the wind.

She was lying on something soft, too soft to be the ground, and a thin quilt was placed carefully over her. Her head ached something fierce. But after a moment or two of concentration, the pain quieted to a dull hum. Her mouth was dry, like she chewed on cotton balls. Her limbs heavy. 

Then came the creak of a chair, followed by slow and light measured steps. A figure emerged from the corner of the small, yet cozy, room. 

Alice. 

“I figured you’d stir soon,” she said, gentler than their first meeting, but not any less guarded. “Wasn’t sure if you’d wake tonight or not. Seems like you answered my question.” She crossed the room and bent over Mitena’s exhausted form, eyes looking her over for any injuries. 

Mitena tried to sit up, but the action made her stomach turn. She winced, and Alice gently, but firmly, pushed her back down onto the plush bed. “Ah ah. None of that. You best lie down and take a breather,” she said.

Alice moved across the small expanse of the room, toward the chair she previously occupied, lifted the wooden chair by the top half, plopped it down next to the bed Mitena was settled in, and sat herself loudly onto it.

“Scared poor Jonah half to death, you did. Arthur said to let you rest, but if you ask me, you were out longer than what’s normal.” Alice handed her a tin cup of water in the process.

Mitena grabbed the cup, fixed herself into a half-lie position, and mumbled a quick thank you before taking several gulps. After today, she would never take water for granted again.

But the water tasted odd. 

Earthy and sharp, with a faint metallic afterbite that settled on her tongue. Mitena paused after a couple more sips, brow scrunching in confusion as she coughed softly into her hand.

“What’s… this?” she rasped, her hoarse voice pushing out the words around the bitter taste.

Alice didn’t flinch. She sat with arms crossed, gaze steady upon Mitena. 

“Bit of sassafras and sweetgum,” she said at last. Almost as if it was the most natural thing in the world to say to someone. “A remedy. Keep the bad spirits out. Or, at least, tell me who is one.” 

Mitena just blinked slowly at her, a look of pure confusion taking over her delicate features. Words lodged somewhere deep in the back of her tongue. Bitch, what the fuck?

She continued on, not waiting for a response from Mitena. “Didn’t know what you were. Still don’t, if I’m honest.” Alice tilted her head, just a fraction, as if speaking to herself.

The silence that followed was thick. 

Mitena set her cup down, next to the light of the oil lamp, with the beating of her heart a little too fast. She sat up, letting the quilt pool around her waist. She didn’t know what unsettled her more—the taste, or the test.

“Jokes on you. I happen to like the taste of sassafras,” Mitena let out, waiting for the reaction that would appear from Alice.

In response, Alice let out a wide belly laugh. “It would appear that you do.”

Mitena smiled, something that she thought wouldn’t happen for a while, and stared down at the quilt on her lap. Her thoughts were still sluggish, tangled with the spiking of her drink and the last thing she remembered before passing out. 

The calendar.

The date.

1932. 1932. 

It punched through her again: hot, staggering, impossible.

She barely heard her own whisper, “What day is it?”

She just wanted another confirmation. To be sure. For her own sake. 

Alice raised an eyebrow, then answered slowly. “Still the fifteenth. Of May.”

Mitena swallowed hard. “...And the year?”

The pause was long.

Slowly, she looked up at Alice, whose eyes were wide with confusion. They met Mitena’s own, filled with quiet desperation, for an answer she already sensed would ruin her, but still needed to hear.

Alice didn’t look away. “Nineteen thirty-two,” she said softly. “Same as it was yesterday.”

Mitena didn’t speak. Couldn’t. Her fingers curled into the quilt as the room tilted, just enough to send nausea rolling through her again.

Alice noticed. She stepped closer and gently took Mitena’s cold, trembling hands. “Easy now. One breath at a time.”

The moment their skin touched, Mitena’s mind stuttered—then unraveled.  A rush of images flooding forward.

A flicker of a child’s laughter by a riverbank. A woman grinding corn by the hearth, her hands brown and calloused. Fingers pressing herbs into a poultice. Laughter beneath a patchwork sky. A baby’s first cry echoing in a quiet room of log and bark. A man’s voice raised in anger, then broken with grief like splinters in the chest. The smell of smoke, of blood, of spring rain.

None of it hers. Too vivid, too raw, and too old. These were memories soaked in someone else’s life. She tried to pull away, but the flash had already passed, leaving behind a strange ache in her ribs and a ringing in her ears.

“I—I just—I can’t—” she spluttered. It was too much, the strange images, this place, the weight of it all. 

Alice’s grip tightened slightly, her brow furrowing, just for a heartbeat. A flicker of something crossed her face: recognition, maybe. Or surprise. Her eyes lingered on Mitena’s, but she said nothing.

“Now, now. No need to go unraveling all at once,” Alice said gently, removing one hand to steady Mitena’s shoulder. Her voice was steady, grounding.

“You don’t understand! I’m not—This place—” Mitena’s voice cracked. “It’s not for me. I don’t belong here. I’m seeing things, I’m not—” Not ready. Not real. Not sane.

The words tumbled half-formed, crumbling under the weight of disbelief. She couldn’t bring herself to say the rest. Not from this time. Not from this world.

Alice didn’t push. She simply gave her hand another reassuring squeeze, her thumb brushing softly over her knuckles. A quiet anchor.

“Reckon that’s something we all feel now and again,” she said after a beat, her voice low. Mitena deflated. Feeling lost. 

Alice stood, picked up the oil lamp from the table, and stepped toward the door. At the threshold, she glanced back. “By the way,” she added, “I changed you out of those dusty clothes and put you in one of my nightgowns. Your dress was lookin’ a little worse for wear, but I’ll find you somethin’ sparklin’ to wear come mornin’.”

Mitena gave a faint nod. It was all she could manage.

Alice opened the door, but paused once more, “Oh, and that dress of yours,” she added, almost offhand, and turned to face Mitena. “Never heard of no dressmaker called H and M . Tag was stitched right into the collar. Definitely not from round here.”

There was no judgement in her voice. Just a flicker of something else. A twinkle of understanding in her eyes left unsaid.

“Get some sleep, Mitena Lewis,” she said. “You’ll need it come morning.” 

The warm glow of the lamp casting long shadows across the room as she stepped into the hall. The door closed behind her with a soft click, sealing the darkness in like a held breath.

Metina was left in the dark. 

But this time, she didn’t feel entirely alone in it.

Chapter Text

     THE morning came slowly.

Golden light spilled through the curtains in narrow slats, catching the dust in the air like it was dancing. For a moment, Mitena lay still, just listening. Somewhere down the hall, a kettle clattered. Wood creaked. Floorboards shifted with age.

For a long while, she didn’t move, just soaking in the quiet. 

Her dreams had been strange. Flashes of short, dark brown hair, like the dark coffee she enjoyed in the mornings. Eyes dark red, like aged berry wine. A voice she couldn’t place whispering her name—not like a question, but a claim.

Mitena.

Like a promise. Like a prayer.

When she finally sat up, the world felt sharper than it had any right to be. Her body still ached, but the pain had dulled to something bearable. She moved quietly, looking around the quaint room now bathed in daylight.

It was simple: a twin mattress with a wire-frame headboard pushed against the far right wall. The quilt that had kept her warm was a plain cream-and-cotton affair. A dark wood dresser, worn with age, stood by the door, topped with a buttery yellow basin and pitcher, and a toothbrush with toothpaste, which she gratefully used. A cast iron fireplace held the remains of smoldering embers. The walls were plain white stucco. A small bedside table and nearby chair, where Alice had sat the night before, now held the clothes she’d promised. 

Mitena walked over and picked up the clean, slightly worn down dress, faintly scented of lavender, her favorite scent, and soap.

Nonetheless, it was pretty. Deep navy blue, soft to the touch, unmistakably vintage—or at least modern for the time she was in. The fabric flowed, cut to drape gracefully, with a flounce neckline edged in contrasting thread that framed a flattering V. The sleeves stopped just above the elbow. Without zippers, it took effort to pull over her head. While Alice’s petite frame had likely allowed the dress to hang loose, Mitena’s curvier shape made it hug her waist and hips instead.

Her Nana’s clip was gone, likely lost in the field. The thought made her throat tighten. She left her hair down in waves. And after a moment of searching, she found her kitten heels shoved beneath the bed. Loafer-style and black, they felt timeless enough to pass for the 1930s.

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she stepped into the hallway. Unsure which way to go, she followed the sound of laughter and clattering dishes.

The small kitchen was bright, and she squinted against the sunlight. The smell of coffee and cornmeal hung in the air. A wood stove crackled low. Alice stood at the counter wrapping warm biscuits in a towel, while Arthur sat at a small table, tin mug in hand, newspaper folded in the other.

The three children from yesterday buzzed around like bees. The boy, she would place at about eight, banged a spoon against a tin plate. A freckled girl with braids chased him. The smallest, barely walking, gnawed on a wooden spoon, watching the chaos with wide eyes.

The boy noticed her first, then the girl. Their noise stopped, and the rest of the room followed their gaze.

“You clean up alright,” Arthur said, voice gruff but not unkind.

Alice didn’t turn, just glanced over her shoulder. “My favorite dress. Fits you different,” she said. “But suits you just as well.”

Mitena flushed, unsure what to say. She shifted awkwardly, feeling out of place in this domestic scene, until Alice handed her a plate: a biscuit, two eggs, and something that resembled ham.

“Sit. Eat,” Alice said. “You’ll need the energy.” Mitena nodded, and walked towards the wooden table, taking a seat across from Arthur.

The girl stared openly. “Where’d you come from?”

“Lettie,” Arthur warned sternly, not quite scolding but something that said mind your manners. 

Not to be outdone, the boy puffed up with importance. “I’m Henry,” he announced.

The baby, Nora, had apparently just learned her name and was determined to say it as often as possible, repeating it with unsettling frequency.

She ate slowly, the food heavier and richer than she remembered from her time, but altogether delicious. 

It was strange, this ease. The familiarity.

Lettie approached, a bit more shyly now, and in calmer spirits, most likely from the reproach from her father. “You’re pretty.” 

Mitena smiled, surprised. “Why thank you kindly.” And she leaned in as if sharing a secret, “So are you.”

Lettie beamed, her gapped tooth on display. “What’s your name again?”

“Mitena,” she answered. “And you’re Lettie?”

“I am! Lettie Turner.” She said with a smile and pride in her eyes. But soon, a moment’s pause. “Your name Choctaw?” She asked, puzzled. 

Alice turned, “That ain’t a polite question, missy.” In response, Lettie looked down in disappointment, “Sorry, mama.”

“Ain’t me you gotta apologize to.” Alice replied evenly.

“No, no. That’s quite alright, it’s a question I get a lot.” Mitena smiled at Alice, then turned to Lettie. “It’s from my daddy’s side. His mama, my Nana, was Choctaw. His papa’s people were Omaha, but he passed before my daddy was born.”

Alice’s gaze softened. Arthur lowered his paper, now listening.

“What’s it mean?” Lettie asked, voice full of wonder.

“Coming moon,” Mitena said. Lettie’s eyes widened. “Like the moon in the sky?”

“Exactly,” she beamed. “My daddy used to call me Moonbeam.” Her voice grew quiet. “Said his father told stories about the moon. Said it was powerful, that it carried something from the old world. That it brought spirits back in new forms. Some good. Some… not so good.”

Lettie’s brows lifted. Henry, standing next to his father, had gone quiet, watching.

“Omaha men and their stories,” Arthur said with a surprising, amused tone. He folded his paper. “My sister married one. Moved out west. He could spin a tale so vivid it’d make you forget what was real.”

Mitena’s smile faded into something softer. “I never learned the full stories,” she admitted, fingers tracing her cup’s rim. “But Daddy always said I was born under a full moon. That it meant something.”

Arthur raised a brow. “Omaha belief, maybe. The moon carries weight in a lot of old stories.”

A quiet blanketed the table, the kind that didn’t feel empty but just full of thought.

“Does my name mean anything, Mama?” Lettie asked eagerly, breaking the silence.

“It means joy, baby. Because you bring so much joy into our world.” Lettie grinned smugly at her brother, who rolled his eyes. 

“Alright, come on now,” Alice said briskly, clearing the plates. “You and I got a trip to town ahead of us.” She motioned for Mitena to stand.

☾ *** ☾

The walk to town would’ve taken an hour, but thankfully the truck was ready for use, shaving the trip down to twenty-five minutes. The road wound through brush and trees, the wind whispering through the leaves. Through the passenger window, the land had changed, bent by time.

As they approached the outskirts of town, something tightened in her chest. 

Recognition. 

First came the tree.

Then the crooked fence. The narrow road dipping through the hill. The civic hall—no longer faded, but pristine white. Landmarks burned into her memory had all but softened now, like someone had taken sandpaper to her hometown.

But this wasn’t home. Not yet. Not in the way she remembered

As they curved toward the square, she spotted a small brick diner. Trimmed in buttery yellow. Familiar. Except now, a hand-painted wooden sign hung crooked in the window:

WHITES ONLY.

Her breath caught, contending with the reality that the same diner that would serve Cokes and curly fries to her and her friends would now shut out anyone who looked like them.

“You okay?” Alice asked, her eyes focused on the road ahead of them, voice calm but grounding.

Mitena nodded, the sign quickly passed behind them now. “Yeah…just thought I saw something.”

“Town’s small,” Alice said. “But you’d be surprised what you can find if you look hard enough.” 

Mitena couldn’t have agreed more. 

The truck rumbled to a stop in front of a tan building. JJ’s General Store was painted across the top of the building in bold black letters. It was the same name that had appeared on the calendar that changed everything. There was no “Whites Only” sign this time. Just hand-painted ads for coffee, tobacco, dry goods, and more. A small mercy.

She stepped out slowly, the breeze catching the bottom of her dress. With a good look around, she noticed, across the street from the shop Alice was walking toward—a bakery. A small, one-brick, faded-blue building. Nothing remarkable, really.

And, yet. 

It began with a thrum beneath the soles of her heels, a low, endless buzz. A wave of dread swept toward the bakery, darkening everything but its pale blue walls. The ground there will know death . Not one, but many. Soaked in the residue of lives gone by, death wasn’t whispering now, the way it had with Nana. No, this time it was screaming.

Mitena blinked hard. The walls of the bakery shimmered, its windows flickering with ghostlight. Banging erupted from inside, unseen, heavy fists slamming the glass. Voices howled, screaming to be heard. Frantic. Violent. It was a warning of doom and rot.

It was like her crossing through time had amplified the intensity of her once tame abilities, altering and stretching it to be a version of itself more unruly, more unrestrained. Like a rubber band stretched to its limit, ready to snap. It was not a single whisper of death calling for one soul. It demanded many.

Then—

A hand. Warm and firm. Squeezing her shoulder softly. 

“Hey,” Alice said, voice low but steady. Look of concern evident.

But the darkness faded. The windows stilled. The bakery quieted. Mitena exhaled, “Sorry…just a bit lightheaded from the sun.”

Alice studied her, nodded, and then turned towards the store once more, calling over her shoulder, “Don’t lock them knees next time. Would hate to have to carry you out of here.” 

Mitena chuckled and followed after, grateful not to be pressed further. 

Inside, the bell above the blue door tinkled as they entered. The store was dim, smelling of wood and scented wax. Wooden floors creaked underfoot. Shelves were lined with sacks of flour, bolts of cloth, jars of candy, small tools—everything as far as the eye could see.

Reminds me of a wooden Walmart.

Alice greeted the shopkeeper, an older man with tanned skin, thick round tortoise-shell glasses, salt-and-pepper braids, and weathered eyes. He greeted her back and gave Mitena a courteous nod from behind the counter. A look of interest, directed at the newcomer.

Alice moved with practiced familiarity, grabbing items off shelves and holding them up to Mitena’s frame—simple clothes, underthings, a spare pair of shoes. But Mitena’s mind was elsewhere, too far away to register the items Alice held.

These visions, of past and death, had once been quiet. Manageable. Tame. But now? They were louder. Harsher. Unpredictable. What had once been gentle had turned feral. She was scared to contend with the fact that these… intuitions were changing. That even tame situations could twist these abilities into something scary to anticipate. To endure.

Satisfied, Alice placed the items on the counter and nodded for the storekeep to ring them up. Alarmed, Mitena quickly closed the distance between them and grabbed her wrist gently.

“Wait! I—I can’t let you pay for all this. I don’t have anything on me yet. I can work it off. I have skills in nursi— healing and can provide my services to your family,” she rushed out.

Alice snorted and turned back to the shopkeeper. “That’s good to know. I can put those skills to use. But beside the point,” she flicked her hand around the expanse of the shop, “this is my shop. Well—Arthur’s and mine.”

Mitena blinked. “Wait, what?”

Alice grinned. “Arthur inherited the shop from his papa, and I do the bulk of the managin’. I got the head for it. Pete here helps out when we’re busy.” The man behind the counter gave a small wave.

“Oh,” Mitena said, a little dumbfounded. “So I’ve been arguing with you about you…paying yourself? Thanks.” She deadpanned. 

“Sure seems so, and no problem,” Alice teased, eyes dancing in amusement and mirth, and pleasant surprise at the shimmer of true personality escaping from Mitena. 

☾ *** ☾ 

The gravel crunched beneath the tires as they rolled into the grassy path that served as a parking spot. Evening light draped the porch, and the silence felt tender.

The time at the store, and the tour around the town, left Mitena feeling on edge, with the familiarity of a place she knew now lost to time. It was tiring, and so many questions about what came next remained.

Alice killed the engine, and the house stood quiet and steady ahead of them, a lantern in the front window beginning to reveal its glow to the approaching nighttime. 

Alice climbed down first, swinging the door shut behind her. “Let’s get going,” she said, already moving toward the porch.

Mitena followed, but lingered at the bottom step. “I can head out after I pack, if that’s alright,” she said softly. Arthur opened the front door, before Alice could respond, and was silhouetted by the warm light inside. 

“Spare room got a bed and clean sheets, and sits empty most of the time,” she said simply. “Might as well put it to use.”

Mitena glanced at Arthur, who she initially thought would refute the offer, but he stood silent. In lockstep with his wife.

“But you barely know me,” Mitena replied. Her voice twinged with defensiveness and exhaustion. “I don’t even know how long I’ll be here, or what I’m doin’. I don’t have money, and I can’t repay you.”

Alice turned back, facing Mitena again. “You don’t owe us nothin', and you’re not staying for free.”

Arthur leaned a shoulder against the doorframe. “We’ve been around long enough, and seen enough dangers out there, to recognize when someone’s more lost than dangerous,” he said, his deep voice rumbling each word.

Their words twinged something in her chest. Her hands curled against her sides. “I’ve been a burden to you folks since I got there,” she said, looking down. “But you have my word. I’ll repay you back somehow.” There was determination glinting in her eyes as she spoke.

Alice snorted. “Ya think we just let anyone into our home and truck? You’re here for a reason, even if it hasn’t made itself known yet. I can feel the Great Spirit say so.” Then Alice moved past Arthur and through the doorframe.

Mitena swallowed, caught between culpability and a flicker of relief. She glanced at Arthur, still in the doorway, looking directly at her.

The glimmer of suspicion wasn’t entirely extinguished, but there, if you stared long enough, was a speck of acceptance. Then he too turned and followed Alice, leaving the door wide open for Mitena to follow along.

☾ *** ☾

The spare bedroom looked the same as she’d left it that morning, except the sheets were properly tucked into place.

Alice was with me the entire day…did Arthur do this?

Alice had recruited the help of her husband to bring in the supplies from the general store, and the items now sat neatly on top of the dresser by the door. Alice stepped back to give her space, while Arthur hovered just inside the bedroom doorway.

“Alice mentioned to me, mighty briefly, that you’re a healer. Our last Alikchi , may the Great Spirit guide him, passed last summer, and we’re in need of another healer for our people,” he said. “If you’re set on earnin’ your keep, there’s space to offer healin’ through the shop.”

Mitena turned to face Arthur. “You want me to work… in the shop?”

“Under it,” Alice clarified. “We’ll keep it quiet. By appointment only. You wouldn’t be running your own corner, just working through us, but you’ll have the freedom to do what you do best.”

“How would you know if I’m any good?” Mitena cocked an eyebrow. 

Arthur shrugged, his shoulders lifting lazily. “We don’t.”

Alice shot him a sharp look, causing the taller man to flinch back slightly.

“But,” she added, her voice even, “we’ve been doin’ this long enough to know when someone’s walkin’ around with something real. We’re not asking for miracles, just effort."

Arthur added, “We’ve taken chances on worse bets.” Mitena chuckled in response. 

As the couple shuffled out of the room to let her settle, she called after Arthur, “By the way, what does JJ in JJ’s General Store stand for?”

He gave a small smile. “Nothin'. Pa just thought it would make it sound more professional.” Then he walked out, closing the door behind him.

She shook her head in amusement and sank onto the bed, the quilt cool beneath her fingers. She looked around the room, still struggling to believe it was hers—even temporarily. 

As she leaned back into the bed, Arthur’s words from earlier drifted into her mind. 

My sister married one, and moved out west…

At the time, she hadn’t let herself react. Haven’t let herself process that sentence. But now, alone in this room, her room, her thoughts circled back to it. It was a simple comment, tossed into conversation like it meant little. But something in her recognized it as more .

Her father used to speak in riddles about the past, of Ohama family history, about his father’s people, and his grandfather’s. About how they scattered, married out, disappeared into other names, other towns. A name here, a place there. Nothing solid to grasp. 

As she stared up at the ceiling, a prickle worked up the back of her neck. She didn’t know for sure, not yet, but something in her bones felt the pull of a thread. 

This place wasn’t just chance. It wasn’t just kindness. Someone connected to her had been her before. Arthur’s sister?

Mitena could feel it in the walls, in the quiet pull of the room around her. It felt like something had brought her back on purpose. 

The purpose? 

She wasn’t sure yet. 

☾ *** ☾ 

Back in town, the bakery stood silent.

The CLOSED sign hung stark in the window, catching the glow of the moon up above. 

Inside, the place was anything but still. Flour dusted the air and countertops alike as a skeleton crew of owner and bakers moved through the motions of prep, kneading, portioning, and setting dough to rise. The day’s rush was over, but tomorrow’s demands had already begun.

“What a doozy of a day,” grumbled the bakery’s owner, a ruddy-faced man with a gut as large as a flour sack and forearms dusted in flour and sweat. He bore a tired scowl of someone who lived to work, and not work to live.

“If I ever lay eyes on that no-good sonuvabitch Frank again, it’ll be a cold damn day in hell.

He slapped the dough with the back of his hand, more force than necessary. “Always runnin’ his mouth, actin’ like he owns the town, him and his damn redskins. They don’t respect nothin’. Don’t belong here, never did. Including that damn Choc general store across the way.”

Three bakers, Dale, Donnie, and Ray, chuckled from their stations. 

The fourth, a younger man, Jesse, wiry and hunched over a tray of cooling rolls, didn’t look up and rolled his eyes in response. “What’d Frank do this time?”

Another harsh slap of dough, flour puffing into the air. “Looked at me funny,” he grunted. “All smug, like he knew somethin’ I didn’t. Like he was better than me.”

There was a pause, the kind that always followed his stupidest declarations, then laughter bubbled up again, unkind and eager to please. The younger man muttered under his breath, “Don’t take much for you to see ghosts in shadows.”

Another baker, Dale, one who’d joined the chorus of laughter, wiped his hands on his apron. “Next time he’s near the shop, you gonna call the sheriff, Randall?”

Randall paused the pounding of the dough in front of him, “Next time, if he damn near breaths next to me, I’ll shoot the damn the Choc myself!”

Before another chorus of laughter could ensue, a noise sounded from the front of the shop.

A knock. Knuckles rapping precisely, polite, and patient against the wooden door. 

All five turned to look in the direction of the noise. 

The knock came again. Just once. Just enough to peak Randall’s interest. 

He moved out of the kitchen, towards the front of the shop, and finally stood in front of the shop entrance. A pause, then the latch turned with a soft, reluctant click.

The door swung open. Behind the door stood a man, in his thirties maybe.

Standing at about 5’8”, he wore a well-worn, light-colored button down, the collar open and slightly askew from hard use. Shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows, exposing his forearms. Sturdy dark-suspenders crossed over his shoulders and clipped into his wool trousers, which draped over his scuffed leather shoes. His dark hair was cropped short, layering on his forehead, and his dark eyes difficult to pinpoint the exact shade at this time of night. He was handsome, Randall supposed, in an understated way.

A working man.

“Shop’s closed,” Randall barked, cautious.

“I know it is,” the stranger replied, voice warm as bourbon on a winter night. “But ain’t here for bread.”

He smiled. Broad. Easy. Too easy .

Randall felt it before he understood it—a wrong little chill at the base of his neck.

“I saw your sign out back,” the stranger went on, brows furrowed in false concern but calm as a Sunday. “Said you were hirin’. Now, I just happin’ to think I make the best bread this side of the delta has ever seen.”

Randall hesitated, charmed but thrown off by the carefree attitude of the man. “We are…but not tonight. You’ll have to come back in the morning.”

He nodded, in an air of understanding, stepping back just a hair, gracious—respectful even. Enough to make a body feel safe.

“Oh sir, I understand,” he rushed in sympathy, eyes glinting with something far from understanding. And just for a moment Randall thought he saw a flash of red. “Hard times all ‘round. And I heard this place bakes the kind of bread folks write poems about. Thought maybe I could leave my name. Just in case.”

A pause, before Randall signed but nodded. The way people do when they want to be polite, but end the conversation.

“Yeah…fine. C’mon in . Just real quick though, I’ll pass you some paper and you’s can write down your contact information and references.”

That was all he needed, that was all it took. And when he walked in, with practiced heavy steps and clumsiness, the air noticed. He moved through the room like he already knew its story. His eyes traced around the room and toward the back.

“Now you stay here, and I’ll be back to give you that paper and pencil,” Randall said, but it was as if the stranger didn’t hear him. As if he was entranced by the air, like it was whispering stories to him. 

Weird fuck, was all Randall thought before he moved to the right of the shop space and towards his office. Reaching quickly for the stationary, and rushing back out into the area he left the man. 

Randall froze. 

The front room was empty. The man was gone.

But then came a scream. Then, another.

High, sharp, the kind that tears right through the spine.

Another followed, muffled, gurgled, and wet. Then a thud of something heavy hitting tile, like a sack of flour dropping on the floor.

He dropped the stationary and ran. He rounded the corner of the kitchen, and then, horror.

Flour hit the air like smoke, catching the overhead light in thick, ghost-like white clouds. It smelled like yeast and copper. 

Dale was slumped against the prep table, hands to his throat, as he slowly slid against the floor. His mouth opened in a scream that never came. His throat was torn, no clean-cut, ragged. Red painting his apron like spilled tomato sauce.

Blood. Randall gagged.

One of the boys, Ray possibly, was crumpled by the ovens, his head at an angle that didn’t make sense. Not a trace of blood on him.

To the left, something shifted. He turned, Donnie, barely upright, staggering against the prep counter, one hand pressed hard to a gash around his ribs.

“Run,” Donnie choked out. “He’s— ”

The words dissolved with a splash of blood. 

Behind him, the stranger appeared. Just appeared, like he materialized from thin air. 

He placed a hand on Donnie’s shoulder, a knife lodged into the man’s shoulder but he acted as if it wasn’t even there, “You gave it a good go,” he whispered with sympathy, voice soft as cotton. “But you’re leakin’. Ain’t no shame in surrender.”

Then, with one sudden twist, he drove his hand, with what appeared to be claws to Randall, deep through Donnie’s stomach. Donnie jerked forward, stilled, then slumped and fell hard onto the ground. 

With an intense sense of fear springing forward, Randall screamed. 

The man sighed, pulling out the knife. “Shh, shhhh. Let’s keep to our indoor voices, alright?” He said with mockful patience, like a father scolding a child.

Randall turned and ran.

Slipped, half-fell, on something slick, and caught himself on the counter edge. He pushed off with some difficulty, feet scrambling beneath him as he tore through the kitchen and toward the front shop. 

He reached the main door and yanked on the handle hard.

Locked.

He hadn’t remembered locking it. 

He fumbled with the bolt, fingers shaking, hands useless, until a voice behind him cooed—sweet sounding as a lullaby, with a hint of raspiness.

“Well that’s just rude,” the voice drawled behind him, full of playful hurt.

Randall spun, back pressed tightly against the door. Heart beating a million miles a second.

He didn’t appear to be breathing hard. Blood glistened not only on his hands, claws, and the front of his shirt, but also on his face. Around his mouth. In his mouth. He stood in the doorway like he’d been born there, elbow propped lazy against the frame, blood glistening on his forearms like gloves. His smile was easy and lopsided.

God save me. 

He didn’t notice before, but the sharp glint of his teeth was sharper than before. Longer and more beast than man.

“Now, I was gonna ask you your name,” he went on, sauntering forward with a loose gait. “But you ain’t exactly in a conversational mood, it seems to me.”

“I—I don’t know what you want—I got money!” Randall gasped and his voice cracked, chest heaving.

The man clicked his tongue, expression softening, almost tender, “Well now, that’s honest.” He said with a small nod. “Not helpful, but honest nonetheless.”

He stepped closer, slow and smooth, like a dance done before. “Truth is, I don’t rightly know why I walked in. Not til’ I smelled…” He paused in thought, as if searching for the answer. 

And Randall swore he could’ve heard a strange lilt to his voice for just a second.

“Smelled what?” Randall asked quickly, eager to provide an answer.

The man, tilted his head, blinked once, then twice. Then grinned, wolf-like. 

“Nevermind that,” he said, shaking it off like a dog flinging water. “S’not important.”

He drifted even closer, a mere couple steps away from Randall, red eyes flicking toward the shop window, glowing even more red from the streetlamps and moonlight outside. 

“What is important is who owns the lil’ shop across the street.” He said casually, like he was asking about mere store recommendations. “Cute place. Blue door. Smells like…” he paused and sniffed in the direction of the general store, “Rainwater, sandalwood, and lavender. And of bones that don’t belong to this time.”

Randall blinked, confused, still shaking, and convinced more than ever that the man standing in front of him was completely batshit crazy.

“Oh, that place?” he rushed nervously.  “That place ain’t—ain’t for folks like you and I,” he spat, voice suddenly bitter. “Some Choctaw couple run it, keep to themselves like the rest of their kind meant to do. Somewhere out in the fields. Should’ve burned the fuckin' place when we had the chance.”

That did it. 

The false bravado of warmth dropped clean out of the man’s face. He looked at Randall as if discovering spoiled meat. 

“Well,” the man signed, “you were doin’ alright right until that bit.”

He moved before Randall could breathe. Claws slid through ribs and bones like water, and guts spilled forward. Randall gasped, mouth opening to scream, but nothing came. 

He held him there, “You had a good death waitin’ on ya, and you went and spoiled it with that tongue.” The man let him go, and Randall hit the wet floor in a collapsing heap. 

He stepped back from the body, stretching his neck with a soft pop. “Can’t have any of y’all walkin’ round after. Wouldn’t be polite.”

He moved with silent grace now, deliberate and quiet. Once in the kitchen again, he stood over the blonde man he bit first, slouched over by the oven. He crouched down, and looked him over, before a sickening crunch, a roll of a head, and then silence. 

He wiped his hands on an apron nearby and hummed softly. An old folk tune, something older. Irish maybe.

He stood to walk out, but then a sound. Behind him. 

A breath. A scrape of a shoe on a tile. 

A mistake. He turned, a small closet in sight, open just an inch. It was just enough to catch the glint of wide, terrified eyes.

Jesse.

“What do we have here?” the man drawled. He walked with no urgency, blood slicked talons opened the door slowly.

And there stood Jesse, flinching, bracing, but no blow came. His ginger hair wild and bright in contrast to the dark closet. His brown eyes pleading.

The man muttered out, gentle, “You’re a quiet one. Smart. They live longer.” He tilted his head, studying the man no older than twenty. “You’re young. But it’s hard to tell after some time. Got that scrappy look.” And as if talking to himself, he muttered, “You could come in handy.”

The stranger smiled, flashing those stained teeth. Stained with the blood of his coworkers. Jesse’s whole body trembled, shaking his head, “ What are you?”

“Shhh,” the man said, resting his bloody hand against Jesse's white shirt, transferring the wetness onto him. Reassuring him. “It hurts for a bit. Then it stops, on the account of you dyin',” he chortled. “Then you get hungry.”

Jesse stared in horror, but the man continued. “My name’s Remmick, by the way. Figured you oughta know who to blame.”

A flash, teeth like knives, eyes as red as flaming coals. He moved fast, inhumanely fast, pinning Jesse by the shoulders and biting down hard into Jesse’s neck, until he stilled and was drained. 

And somewhere way across town, past the roads, and trees, Mitena sat up straight in bed. Heart racing, breath held, with the unshakeable sense that something was coming.

Something old and unavoidable. Right in her direction.

Chapter Text

June 1932 - A Month Later.  

IT had been nearly a month since Mitena landed in the Choctaw homelands, decades before her time.

Already, the townspeople had come to call her “the girl with healing hands.”

She didn’t argue the nickname. People believed what they wanted to believe, and that was plenty alright with her. She wasn’t some mystic healer, but if the illusion gave them comfort, who was she to take that away?

They said the fever she helped one of the elder's break was because of the Choctaw words she folded into the water they drank, never mind the willow bark tincture she brewed that was proven to pull heat from the blood. 

They swore the boy who fell from the barn roof lived because her fingers called the Great Spirit back to him, but ignored the splints and the steady hands that set his bone. 

They whispered the newborn who came into the world blue, found breath only because she breathed power and strength into him, but forgot the countless minutes and determination of endless rhythm and pressure of practiced resuscitation.

She had a quiet reputation now. Not quite accepted. Not quite seen as one of them, but useful. It was a feeling she knew well, and for now, it was enough.

Still, sometimes it hit her—how surreal all of this was. How completely unmoored she’d become. A month ago, she’d been at her Nana’s funeral. Now, she was here, wearing clothes not of her time and trying not to scream at the sky.

She didn’t know how, or if, she’d ever make it back. Or what she’d return to if she did. 

Most of the time, the tasks of the day kept the panic at bay: boiling tinctures, patching wounds,. But at night, in the quiet, the grief crept back in. The tears of frustration that made her body shake, confusion, and unfiltered anger. 

Not just anger for herself, but for her Nana who wasn’t properly grieved, for the community she left behind, for the friends who would take her mind off tough days at the hospital, for her father she never got answers for, and admittedly, for the mother she now wished she reached out more to.

At nights, she grieved the version of her life that might be gone for good.

But whether she liked it or not, Mitena was settling into the community. She found some comfort in the way of life here, even if a small part of her hated how natural the routine was starting to feel.

But that didn’t dim the fire in her. She did everything she could to find an answer to her predicament: a soul trapped in a time that didn’t belong. She poured over books that even mentioned the words time travel, mostly fictional works, scripts kept by elders, even tried to listen to the wind in rare moments of stillness and introspection, willing the Great Spirit to speak to her. None of it worked. 

She was no closer to getting home.

In the daylight, she tended to Choctaw folks who came through the door with cuts, bruises, broken bones, or desperate prayers. By afternoon, she caught a ride back home with Alice and helped to sort herbs while the children shouted in the distance. By night, she surrounded herself with the warmth of the family who had taken her in, people she’d grown to truly care for.

But night also brought something else. 

A presence, watching—never far. The feeling of eyes on her as soon as the sky turned dark.

Even in the mundane moments, shelling peas on the kitchen table, she felt eyes through the window. When sweeping ash from the porch, she sensed an intensity just beyond the tree line. A pressure in the air. A thickness.

And whenever she turned suddenly, hoping to catch the culprit, the night worked against her. Sometimes she wasn’t sure if it was a person at all. Maybe just a shadow in the trees that never disappeared.

Like Nalusa Falaya, that grotesque, creeping humanoid figure of old stories. Feeding on her fear and terror. 

And with this nightly presence came dreams. Or nightmares. She wasn’t sure yet.

Of eyes, always red and inhuman, reflected in the moonlight. Of dark, soft hair, that ran through her fingers. The silkiness lingering in her palms. 

Of scents of moss, decaying flowers, spiced ale, and amber. A scent she wanted scrub from her memory, but also inhale until it drowned her. 

Of rough hands skimming the inside of her thighs, her breasts, her lips. A calloused palm cradling her cheek. Softly and intimately. 

Of a mouth on her throat. Skimming lips, possessive. Nibbles on her neck.  

Of words in a tongue she was unfamiliar with, pressed against her skin like a curse, or a promise.

Sometimes when she was close to giving in, of letting such passion consume her, she dreamed of her father too. Not as she remembered, but changed. Older. Distant. And watching.

And when she woke in a sweat, heart hammering, the feeling of the eyes remained. Unlike those other nights when grief racked her body, this paralysis felt otherworldly. A haunting.

She didn’t scream. Didn’t move, but just lay there. Every nerve in her body buzzing like frayed wires. Feeling him. 

Because it had to be a him—whoever, whatever he was. Something older than memory, moving with recognition. She didn’t know if he was man, spirit, or nightmare made flesh. Only that he knew her.

☾ *** ☾

He found it at the edge of a field, the night he caught her scent.

A silver hair clip, dulled by time and half-swallowed by earth. Bent slightly out of shape. 

Nothing special to most, but not to him.

The wind told him first. A hush through the dried stalks, revealing where her steps had lingered. Where the earth still remembered her.

He crouched, careful not to disturb the soil, and lifted the object between two fingers. Silver and tarnished.

Remmick brought it to his face, his fingers closed around the metal, and breathed reverently. 

Crushed herbs from a garden, the freshness of rain, and the woody sweetness of a familiar tree.

Lavender. Rainwater. Sandalwood. 

It made his teeth ache. Made his knees weaken.

The scent was faint, but threaded with something strange. Like it had been stretched through time. Familiar, but out of rhythm.

Remmick’s jaw tensed. This wasn’t the first time. She always left pieces behind.

Across lifetimes, they returned to him. A gold comb. A bell without a clapper. A handkerchief, worn soft by centuries, embroidered with wildflowers—always the same pattern. She refused to change it. Man, she was stubborn in every life.

Things lost, but always found by him in the end. He didn’t know what force carried them forward. Only that they came when she did. And they always led him back to her.

Remmick dreamed of her before he even had a name. Before the sea split for the land of his birth, he knew the shape of her hands, not as memory, but as prophecy. 

Some part of him had always known she was his axis. The thing he was made to orbit.

And she was close. He felt it in the air, in the tension of the soil, in the stilled hush of the wind that waited for something to break.

Their souls were bound, beyond memory, beyond time.

And in every life, she slipped away too soon. Dying in his arms. Dying in others’. Always before it could fully begin with him.

Remmick searched for her in every echo. In the hum of the gospel belted on porches. In the bow of a fiddle or guitar. In the broken chords of men whose music could bend the veil and let the past, and future, bleed through.

In this life, her name escaped him. But her essence lived in his mouth, in the tips of his fingers, in his mind, and his heart.

Although, she never remembered him. Not at first.

But her soul did. It recognized the shape of his—its grief. And hers always reached for his in longing, before fate snatched her away again.

He’d vowed, lifetimes ago, to stop searching. To let time win. And yet, here he was.

But not this time. 

This time, he would not be cursed to live with only her memory while she lived with none of him. Blissfully unaware, and free to live life without him.

A punishment worse than condemnation to Hell. Fitting, maybe, but he was done accepting it.  

He had done an unforgivable thing to bring her back.

This time, he tore the world sideways.

And something unnatural followed her return, he could smell it—a touch of death in her essence.

He’d wandered for years chasing dead ends and old stories, that is, until time spent in New Orleans. Until the right doors opened up. His answer didn’t lie in books or scripture, but in back alleys. In incense smoke. And in songs sung low and breathy by candlelight, by servants and devotees to the dedication of spiritualism. 

He was led to the crossroads by practitioners of Hoodo. Not by belief, but sheer desperation.

It hadn’t been a summoning, but a plea. A theft in exchange for a sacred wound.

Deep in the Louisiana woods, where the air hung heavy and the oaks bowed low, Remmick had gone to the crossroads at midnight with offerings of three in his hands. A bottle of black rum. A cherry cigar. A red ascot, tied loosely around his neck.

He’d found the right clearing, where the earth felt older. Three drops of blood on the ground, with a name and grief that stretched across lifetimes.

He didn’t summon a demon—but a trickster. A gatekeeper to the spirit world, nonetheless. 

“Papa Legba, open the gate for me. Open the gate for me. Open the gate for me,” He uttered under the cover of the moon. 

And Papa Legba answered.

The voice between worlds, who spoke all forms of tongue. The one who knew the shape of every road, every fork, to the afterlife and back. The connecter between life, death, time, and whatever lay in between.

Remmick didn’t want to start over. He asked to reclaim what was already his.

“Bring her back,” he said. “None of this life and death repetition. Jus’…back. To me. Forever.” He asked not for resurrection, but restoration.

Legba, an older being with an air of benevolence, wore a coat too heavy for the heat of the Louisiana humidity at night, buttons mismatched, and pockets full of jingling notes, maybe keys, that whispered when he moved. His wooden cane tapped the dirt like it was marking time, or measuring how much was left.

A wide-brimmed hat covered most of his face and cast it in shadow, but what showed was etched with the weight of knowing.

His eyes held the crossroads. Pure white. Unblinking. 

Smoke clung to him, and moved across the space between both men. 

“Strange blood, yours,” Legba had murmured, circling him. “Not warm. Not welcome. And still, you ask to twist time for love.” His voice like gravel and honey, accented in ancient tones, as if simultaneously sharing a joke but revealing the secrets of time.

He paused, tapping his cane once. “You come to the crossroads with a stolen map. Walk the roads built from Black bone and prayer, and think they’ll open for you just the same?” A crooked smile tugged at his mouth. “You know the words, but not the weight.”

Remmick didn’t flinch. Just gave a lopsided smirk. “Well, reckon you’re right. I don’t know the weight of it, just know how bad it ache.” 

He let the silence stretch for a second. “Ain’t never claim I’d do this the right way. Only that I’d crawl every inch of this damn road if that’s what it took.” He looked up, voice steady.

“So, go on. Tell me where I gotta kneel.”

In response, Ligba tilted his head, and then suddenly threw his head back in a hearty chuckle. “Interesting one you are,” and slowly, and with grace, held out his hand. 

Remmick offered her handkerchief, worn and cherished, and an offering to their connection. Legba took it, inspecting the cloth, a look of pity passing through his features. Brief and gone in an instant. 

The handkerchief vanished, in his hand one second and gone the next.

“You want to rip a thread from the wrong tapestry?” Legba had laughed. “Then bleed for it.”

Remmick still remembered the feel of Papa Legba’s hand against his chest, over his heart, a brand that burned straight through flesh.

“Love eternal, but not life—this will be no more.” Legba had said. “Time will not collect its debt from you.” Then he smiled. Not cruel, or even kind. Just certain. “It will take its toll from her.”

A flicker of fear was felt by Remmick in response, but before he had time to say something back, Legba was gone, and the offerings with him. 

The scar still stayed. Still pulsed from time to time beneath his chain. A constant reminder that never let him forget that he had broken something sacred. 

He just hoped he was the one to pay the price in the end. 

He rose slowly, slipping the clip into his pocket. Another piece of her. A thread between lifetimes. Proof that she was real. Flesh, bone, soul. 

Here, and close. Meant for him.

The scent eventually led him to a modest white house. Wood panels weathered, needing paint.

Quaint.

He approached. The house devoid of any light, or movement.

The scent then drifted toward a window at the furthest part of the home, with the curtains inside peeled open, offering no protection from prying eyes. Tsk tsk. 

But there she was. 

She was still half-wild. Even asleep, her body curled like it knew the world meant harm. Skin the shades of river clay and marzipan. Those eyes, closed now, held brown like honey and shadows all at once. Her hair always refusing its confines, but he always preferred it that way.

He’d remember versions of her with a clever mouth and soft hands.

Once with a blade to his throat.

Once, exchanging rings. 

And he remembered her smile, always the same. Bright, contagious, and with the ability to light up the night sky.

But here, she was trying to pretend like she belonged. She didn’t. Not to this place. Not to this time. And certainly not with anyone but me. 

That quiet defiance, she didn’t even know she was doing it, only made him love her more. But she always found her way back to him.

He’d wait a bit longer. Watch from the trees. Let the knowing grow slowly like a sickness. Let her feel him from the shadows. In the corners of her dreams.

She was always made of fire—angry, self-righteous, glorious. And in the beginning, she always hated him beautifully.

And when her mind caught up to her soul, he’d be there.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t speed things along. 

So, with one final glance at the figure on the bed, Remmick pulled the silver hair clip from his pocket, and set it gently on the windowsill. He walked away, with some difficulty, before the rays of the morning sun made an appearance.

☾ *** ☾

The town reeked of tension.

The blood had long since been scrubbed from the bakery floor, but it clung in the air, copper-thick and unspoken. 

When the sheriff arrived the morning after the slaughter, come only for a sweet roll and coffee, the bakery door hung open. Inside, flour drifted through the air, soft as snow on the ground. Blood smeared the floor in thick streaks, trampled by heavy bootprints. 

The bodies were not merely dead, but torn. Ripped open at the throat, or gutted, insides exposed like butchered game. It wasn’t clean, and it wasn’t fast. These folks had suffered.

Men’s bellies unspooled like ribbon. Another’s neck snapped in an angle so violent, eyes wide. A third’s head torn from body, a mere couple steps away.

On the counter, a bible lay open, its pages soaked through. Pages stuck together like scabs.

He stood frozen in the doorway, bile rising in his throat, the sweet chirping of the songbirds in the morning felt like cruel mocking.

Nothing was stolen, and every drawer untouched. It was a mystery that confused the sheriff and his men.

A massacre. A reckoning. A purge.

In the weeks that followed, folks quickly passed rumors on the possibilities of what could’ve happened.

The whispers gave it a name before the paper did, and the Gazette crowned it in print the next morning:

THE BREADHOUSE SLAUGHTER — DETAILS BELOW!

Some said it was that Jesse boy, missing from the list of bodies. Some figured he’d been moved by the madman who did it.

Blame rooted itself in old, familiar territory.

It was the outsiders.

It was those damned natives by the river.

It was anyone whose name wasn’t listed in a white church ledger.

The fact that it was white men, respectable and churchgoing, who had been killed made it all the worse. If it’d been a Black man, or one of those Choctaw folk, most of the town would’ve turned the page and moved on with their day.

But this, it was personal. It was war.

And so the town responded the only way it knew how—with suspicion. With control. With violence.

Choctaw families found themselves followed on their walks home. Children were kept from school under the guise of “safety.” White church leaders demanded headcounts and curfews. The trading post and other stores in town, who bore no ‘WHITE ONLY’ signs, but were owned by white people, raised prices for anyone who spoke the wrong language and who looked different.

Some even whispered about bringing the old patrols back. Some didn’t whisper at all.

The Klan, long slunk into shadows, or so it had seemed, began to stir again. 

Crosses were pulled from barns. Robes unfolded from cedar chests. They claimed they wanted justice. What they really wanted was blood and vindication.

And behind closed doors, others began preparing too.

Mitena caught it by accident, returning from the river path just as Arthur’s voice floated through the cracked window of the kitchen. She hadn’t wanted to eavesdrop, but she did anyway.

“...Not one of us, or anything human.”

A long silence followed. Then Alice’s voice, “Don’t matter. White folks don’t need it to be true. They jus’ need a reason.”

“Then we best be ready,” Arthur murmured. “Because somethin’s out there, and it’s hungry.”

Mitena stepped back as she heard the wood creaking from inside of the house. She didn’t want to hear more. 

Only a handful in the Choctaw community, Arthur among them, sensed something deeper at play. Knew better. They considered the impossible: a creature that only walked at night, that drank human blood like fine wine. A vampire.

He recognized the signs. The tearing, the precision. Arthur had heard stories like this before, long ago. And he knew it wouldn’t stop.

Alice also had an inkling, but only in the way birds knew a storm was coming.

And Mitena. Mitena felt it.

She couldn’t explain how, but the signs were there. The nights had turned heavier, as if the dark was thickening. The feeling of being watched, wanted. Her Nana’s hair clip, lost a month ago, sitting on her windowsill.

Alice said it wasn’t her. Arthur didn’t either. Jonah swore the same on one of his weekly visits.

A month after the bakery murders, the town still felt sick, like something rotting under the floorboards.

But more importantly, Mitena rattled with the knowledge of the foreboding racial violence. 

It didn’t matter if it was 1932 or 2009—when white men died, someone else paid for it. And that someone always wore a darker complexion.

She felt the change in the town, like a sickness bubbling. 

The smiles were tighter. The glances longer. Doors didn’t just close now, but they slammed.

And even though she hadn’t been there, or ever been inside the bakery, hadn’t even seen the blood or bodies, she felt eyes follow her like she did. 

Not because white folks knew, but because they believed.

Because when you’re Choctaw or Black, or in Mitena’s instance, both, in a town that calls itself God-fearing, belief is enough to get you killed. 

She watched it all with building anxiety. The so-called precautions, the whispered warnings, the leering looks, the quiet “maybe you should stay home today”s.

The way history seemed to march right on schedule. Like she was living in the footnotes of a textbook in real-time. And the worst part? She knew what came next, but what escaped her was the when .

Mitena studied the lynchings in high school, but now she wished more than ever she remembered more. She’d read about the sundown towns, about the “accidental” fires, about white women who lied, and the Black men who paid the ultimate price. How Black and native women were always collateral.

She’d seen the vile photos in museums of men of color, Black and brown, strung from trees, smiling crowds below them.

But it wasn’t just the Klan, or the bigotry, she feared. It was the watching, the pull. The way the dark seemed to lean in when she walked alone at night.

Hate had a name, and she could brace for that. But this? This was something unnameable.

Chapter Text

7th Century Ireland, After Ceremony

     SHE stood in the doorway of their bedroom, inside the stone house they now called theirs. Barefoot. Braids half-undone, dark locks wild from the wind. Her skin sun-warmed and brown, glistening in the firelight. Light caught the curve of her shoulder. Her hair spilled past her breasts, loose and unashamed. She looked like something carved straight from his needs.

There had been candlelight. Flickering, steady. Not the shivering yellow of gas lamps or the sick hum of bulbs, but flame: alive, sacred. The ring she had given him caught the light—simple gold, smithed rough, uneven. He adored it.

No music, or cheering from their companions. Just the hush of wind hitting stone walls, and the slow breath, heaviness of the moment, between them. The weight of their vows lingering, still clinging to the air.

Remmick remembered how her hands trembled, not from fear but from the magnitude of the moment. If he was honest with himself, his had too. 

She had slid the ring onto his finger. He had done the same. Their hands were bound with ribbon, green silk, still damp from the evening rain. The willow overhead bent low, as if listening.

She had leaned in close , “Does this bind you to me then?” with a teasing edge. 

“Nay,” he had replied, voice playful but certain, the light of the moon kissing his dark hair. “It only reminds you you’ve been mine all along,” His breath had been warm against her ear.

She had smiled at him as she always did—tender, unequivocal. The kind of smile that followed him across centuries.

Now, inside the stone house, the fire cracked low. The air smelled of stoked smoke, candle wax, and her . 

He gazed at her with reverence and quiet madness. He would’ve raised armies in her honor. Torn down nations just to keep her smiling.

Her name this time had been Theodora. Thea, to him. Before that, Minicea. Different names, same rhythm. River-song syllables he could trace across centuries.

“You’re starin’, mo ghrá ,” she had murmured, a blush warming her cheeks.

“I’m to look at you ‘til my bones rot,” Remmick grinned, stepping in her direction. “We’re wed. Bound.” He leaned in, lips brushing her earlobe, drunk on the scent of her. Dried herbs in the daytime. Fresh rain. Notes of rich and sweet wood he could not name. He continued, “‘Til end days, mo chroí .”

She had stepped into his space, breasts to chest. “Always and forever.”

He tilted his head, lips brushing her jaw. “And don’t you forget it.”

But she would. She always would.

Remmick leaned down, and softly kissed her cheek. She tasted of salt and dusk.

Her dress, an expensive blue woad, long but loose now. Her shawl long forgotten. The neckline drawn from one shoulder, close to revealing more. Her soft hands found his chest, brushed over the scarlet wool of his tunic. His name caught between her teeth, unsaid, as if speaking it aloud would end their night too soon.

“I—I want you to—no. Need you to touch me.” She whispered, eyes fixed below his chin.

That was all it took. His self control gone.

He crashed his mouth to hers. Teeth clanked. Tongues tangled in fiery, breathless ache. He kissed her like he meant to burn the taste of her into every cell of his body. Rough fingers curled beneath her jaw, and tilted her head back. She mewled in protest when he pulled away.

“I need you to beg for it more, m'aoibhinn ,” he murmured, lips brushing hers, voice thick with restraint and heat.

He rolled his hips against hers, slow and deliberate. She felt the full press of him, stiff and wanting beneath his trousers.

Thea moaned against his mouth.

With quickness, he picked her up, her legs locked around his waist on instinct. He pressed her to the cool stone of the wall, his thick length grinding slow and deep against the slick, wanting heat between her thighs.

“Right here?” she breathed, her voice broken with need. “You’ll have me up against the wall like a godless man?”

Remmick met her gaze, ultimate deference bleeding from his stare. Red eyes to earth-toned. “The only altar I’ll worship to is the one between your legs.” 

She released a sharp gasp, half-challenge and half surrender, then shivered when his hand slipped beneath her dress, gathering fabric and shift. 

Finally, calloused fingers skimmed along her heat. Slick, ready, wanting.

“There you are,” he murmured against her throat. “So ready for me.”

Her pants turned heavier, “Touch me proper or let me down.”

He chuckled, low and thick. “Oh, you’ll be begging me not to stop soon, mo ghrá.”

She was soaked. For him . 

The build-up during the ceremony, the secret touches, the sweet kisses exchanged during the feast, it had all led to the slick, aching heat between her sweet thighs. He pushed a finger in, and she gasped. Then two. She bit her lip hard, teeth clenching in desperate anticipation. His fingers curled just right, and she gasped— there.

He worked her slow, steady, just the way she needed. Like he knew her rhythm better than she did. 

His thumb moved in aching circles, teasing the place that made her body buck. One hand fisted in his hair, the other clawed down his back.

“You’ll ruin me,” she gasped, raw and trembling.

In reply, he stated, ”You ruined me the moment your soul claimed my name.”

He pulled his fingers from her slowly, savoring the slick heat clinging to them, then sucked them into his mouth, tongue dragging along each finger like he meant to devour her in pieces.

He growled low in his throat, then moved her from the wall, laying her out before the hearth like a sacrament. The grey, weathered stones glowed with firelight, casting shadows over the goddess he made tremble.

Remmick reached the hem of her dress and dragged it up unhurried, like savoring each inch of her was a right he hadn’t earned. The fabric slid over her hips, her ribs, her breasts. Then came the tunic. Then the shift. Layer by layer, he unwrapped her like she was meant to be consumed.

She lay back, bare before him. Belly soft, thighs like silk under the fire light, her chest rising like she’d outrun death just to reach this moment. His breath caught, sharp with hunger, soft with awe.

He dropped to his stomach, kissed the inside of one thigh, then the other, and pulled her legs open, gentle but firm.

Her breath hitched. Surprise turned to fire. 

He tasted her like he wanted to memorize, tongue slow at first, circling, dipping. Her hips lifted off the stone, his name ghosted her lips. 

Then licking turned to lapping, to devouring. His hands anchored her in place while his mouth continued to work her open, relentless and hungry. 

His moan vibrated against her. It sounded muffled, needful, and like he had undone a century of thirst. She tastes like heaven.

She grabbed his hair, lost in all the sensations. He was already lost in her. The sounds Thea made fed something in him that unleashed new heights.

And when she came, it was wild and unpretty. Wanton and howling. Unrestrained. One hand tangled in his hair, the other clawing at the stone. Her back arched, her body shook, legs quaking. She moaned his name like she invented the damn word. 

“Remmick !”

He rose fast, tunic gone, breeches discarded, breath ragged. He gripped her thighs and wrapped them around his waist. He was in her before the tremble even left her thighs.

He entered her in one slow, blinding thrust.

She gasped, keen and high. “Ohh, too thick. Too deep,” she moaned, eyes squeezed shut, legs shaking around him. He gave her a moment to adjust.

He held her jaw gently, pressed his forehead to hers. “You’re mine ,” he whispered, voice rough with worship.

Then he moved.

He fucked her slow at first. Every thrust was a vow, a hymn, a curse. Flesh to flesh, heat to heat. Her wails met his groans, tangled with the slap of hips and the wet ache of skin. She met back his thrusts in equal measure, clinging to him like salvation.

“I’m yours!” Thea screamed, unraveling beneath him.

“ Fuck ,” he growled, voice thick, slipping deeper. Harder. Losing rhythm and reason. 

Her body broke again under him, shaking, gasping, crying out as his cock hit that place that sent pleasure surging through her spine.

And just before she could tip over, he slid his hand between them and circled that aching place, hard and fast. Her cry broke open in the room.

She came again with her whole body. Loud, shuddering, and wrecked.

Remmick followed with a desperate grunt, emptying into her with a trembling that started in his spine.

He pulled out slowly, his release leaking onto her thighs, and collapsed beside her. Both breathing heavily. 

The fire cracked low, and her breathing softened. He pulled her close to him, laying her head onto his chest.

She was asleep before the flames of the fire died, curled into his side, ring glinting faintly, but prettily, on her finger in the dim room.

His hand didn’t leave hers for the rest of the night. Not once.



Present Day — June 1932, Mississippi. 

The ring still fit. Same finger. Same ache.

He had never taken it off.

And still, she died. That time, in his arms, burned by men too afraid of what they couldn’t name. They called her a banshee . Said she was dangerous.

He hadn’t been able to save her in time. 

He remembered the way her mind could find the past, draw it forward like thread pulled from fabric. A memory-keeper . A mirror for what others buried.

She had cupped his face that night, and told him what his mother had smelled like—wild apples and blackberries. 

She touched him that night like she was trying to hold on to something already leaving. 

And then she closed her eyes. 

There was a shadow in her gaze now, unfamiliar and unsettled, like something that had followed her across lifetimes.

He didn’t know what it was. Only that it hadn’t been there before… and it might’ve been his fault.

Had I pulled her back too hard? 

Papa Legba’s words still echoed in his mind— “It will take its toll from her.”

He traced the band around his finger. “We’ll be soon, mo chroí.”

☾ *** ☾

The woods behind the old rail line were quiet. Save for the crunch of brush beneath Lem’s boots, and the occasional cicada screech ringing out.

He was drunk, a bottle of cheap whiskey sloshing warm against his thigh. Light brown hair hung limp across his forehead, sweat gluing to the collar of his wrinkled shirt to the back of his neck. Blue eyes, bloodshot and glassy, wandered the dark.

He hummed something low and off-tune, tripping over fallen branches hidden by the night. Not small, or tall, he carried the kind of roundness that came with cheap beer and fried foods.

Then—a snap. Sharp, close, and echoing behind him. 

He froze, one foot mid-step and stopped walking. Stopped making noise. 

So did everything else.

The hush that followed wasn’t natural.

The owls stopped calling. Cicadas cut their song mid-note. Even the leaves seemed to settle into stillness, like they were listening for something too.

“Hello?...Anyone there?” he called out, voice too loud in the sudden quiet. Too human.

No answer. Just the dark, and the swaying trees. And the creeping certainty that something wasn’t right.

The feeling, awful and crawling, that something was watching him.

His skin prickled. The alcohol’s warm fog vanished in an instant. His body kicked into motion, heart thudding now, feet turning back the way he came.

Then, a sharp whistle cut through the dark. High and mocking.

He stopped. Turned toward it.

Another whistle, behind him now.

He spun quickly, mouth and eyes wide, searching for the source.

Another whistle towards his right, then another to his left, his head following each sharp sound in quick succession. Each one closer than the last. 

Something was playing with him.

A final low whistle, behind him this time, and Lem turned slowly. As if delaying it would ease the panic.

And he nearly dropped his bottle.

Jesse Williams stood in the path.

Pale as milk, shirt open, no shoes. Eyes like glass marbles dimmed by shadow.

And if Lem looked hard enough, he would’ve noticed eyes of ivory white.

“Jesse! What the fuck, man!” Lem barked, stumbling back a step. “Scared me half to death!”

No reply.

Jesse didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe.

His shirt clung to his chest, soaked in something too dark for sweat. A smudge of red trailed from the corner of his mouth down his neck.

His feet dirt-caked. Toenails cracked like old bark.

And his mouth, God, his mouth , was twitching. Like it was learning to smile again.

Lem’s voice wavered. “Folks—folks been tryin’ to find ya…Thought you was dead, they did…What the hell happened to ya?”

Jesse tilted his head, ginger locks matted together, and for a second something flickered behind his eyes. Hunger or recognition. Or both.

“Jus’ a bit parched, is all.” Jesse said, calm as the wind around them. “The thirst is the part they don’t warn you about.” 

That was all the warning Lem got.

Jesse lunged, too fast. Animal-like, and Lem hit the ground hard, pain shooting up his spine. Hot breath hit his throat and then teeth, tearing deep into the meat of his shoulder.

Lem screamed, kicked, fought. But all for naught.

Blood pulsed out in savage splurts between both men, covering them both.

Jesse growled low in his throat, like a dog refusing to let go of his favorite toy. His eyes rolled back in bliss. Then—

He jerked upright. Sudden. Violent. Like something had yanked him by the spine. 

His gaze went distant. And then, smiling, wide and bloody, he leaned close to Lem’s ear.

“Sorry, Lem. You didn’t deserve that,” he said, voice low and soft. “My friend’s callin’.”

He rose, swaying slightly in place.

“You come find us when you’s ready,” Jesse added gleefully, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “We really got somethin’ special brewin’. Lotta fellowship. Real togetherness.” He finished with a dreamy smile on his face.

Then he vanished into the woods with haste.

Lem bled out in the leaves.

But come morning time, not even the ground remembered where he’d fallen.

☾ *** ☾

The Next Day.

The market was busier than usual. The air thick and bubbling. A medley of sun-beaten stalls lined the road, selling vegetables, charms, hand-made soaps, and more.

Mitena kept her eyes low, basket in hand. The weight of her herbs and ointments was oddly comforting. This was the first time she’d walked through town alone, without Alice at her side.

This scared her more than ever. Never mind her still navigating the feeling of second-class citizenship in 1932. But another white man had gone missing. Presumed dead.

Her plan for today was simple: gather the remaining herbs from the garden, bring them over to the shop with Alice before opening tomorrow morning, and head back home. But Lettie had woken with a fever, and the pick-up was with Arthur a town away. Now she was left to tough it out alone.

She was halfway to the shop when a man stepped in her path.

“That’s a lotta medicine from somebody lookin’ like you.” The tone was clear. Did you steal it?

His voice carried, not loud, but sharp enough to draw on a potential audience. She looked up. White. Mid-forties. Pink in the face. A man who didn’t know how to handle the Mississippi sun.

And his eyes. They lingered too long on the curve of her collarbone, exposed by the neckline of her dress.

His eyes dragged over the form, slow and sour. 

He took in her dress, gently clinging from the heat, and fluttering mid-calf. The kind of dress that moved when she did, all flutter sleeves and satin sheen, hugging her hips like it was provocation.

It wasn’t a loud dress by any means. Some would have even called it conservative. But on her, in a town full of types with bad intentions, it was too much.

He smiled, all crooked and crawling. “That’s a lotta medicine for some dressed like that .” Are you a whore?

“I’m jus’ tryin’ to get to my shop,” she said. Her voice held its usual softness, but the tremble cracked through.

He didn’t move from her path. 

“Folks ‘round here say you’re some kind of…herb woman, right?” He leaned in a little, Mitena leaned back.

“Heard you been layin’ your hands on folks. Maybe you could do the same for me. Got a place that’s been hurtin’.” 

He smirked, glancing down at his crotch. “Thought you might take a look.”

Mitena followed his gaze, her stomach tuned. Her face shifted, disgust rippling sharp and clear.

“I’m not lookin’ for trouble,” she said, voice firmer now.

“Oh, I know.” He inched closer, voice dipping lower. “Lookin’ like that, lord knows what you’re tryin’ to stir up. Must get awful lonely with them hands workin’ all that magic. Your shop’s by Everett and Crosby street, right?”

Her blood ran cold at the implication. Her stomach twisted further. She gripped her basket tighter, heart pounding. Words rising and dying in her throat. She opened her mouth—

“Hey! Where ya’ been? I’ve been lookin’ for ya.”

The voice came clean and sharp. Unfamiliar.

Broad-shouldered, tan-skinned, dark braid slung over one shoulder, and fire in his dark eyes. He stepped in beside her like it was ease itself, towering over the man and Mitena in strides.

The white man sneered. “You’re interruptin’ us . We’s havin’ a conversation.”

“‘Bout what?” the young man asked, tone casual, eyes sharp.

“Ain’t none of your business, boy .”

He didn’t flinch. “Sure it is. She’s kin.”

He wasn’t, and they both knew it. But the word brought an end to the conversation.

The man spat on the dirt and stalked off, muttering something too slurred to matter.

When he was gone, the tense silence collapsed. Mitena sucked in air as if she was drowning and was finally able to break above the surface.

“You alright?” The young man asked, turning to her.

Mitena nodded, barely.

“You be careful ‘round these parts. Folk here been real jumpy since the bakery,” he said. “Won’t take much for them to act like beasts.”

She let out a deeper breath. Relief or rage, she couldn’t tell. “Thank you.”

He grinned, rubbing the back of his neck. “Ain’t nothin’. I was actually hopin’ I’d see you.”

Mitena blinked a confused look. “Me? I know you?”

“Nah,” he said, sheepish. “You don’t. You treated my uncle, Calvin, a few days ago. Saw you briefly from the shop window. Jus’ wanted to say thanks.”

Mitena gave a nod, cautious and worn from the earlier encounter.

“I’m Peter,” he offered. “Peter Jones. My people from over near Crow Mountain. We don’t come into town much, but…” He looked down briefly, eyes flicking to the stall beside them. “There’s a gatherin’ tonight. One of ours. Just the Choctaw folk, out near the clearing past Tall Pine. Nothin’ big. Thought maybe you’d wanna come. Music, stories, good food if we’re lucky.”

She hesitated. Since being pulled here, she hadn’t ventured anywhere that wasn’t the Turners’ house or shop. The idea of settling down roots, or god forbid, making friends, terrified her.

“You don’t gotta decide now,” he added quickly. “Jus’...figured I’d ask.” He stared with a hopeful look. 

Then a breeze picked up. Someone passed too close behind her, jostling her shoulder. Peter instinctively reached out to steady her elbow. Their skin met.

It was barely a touch.

But that was enough.

A jolt—no, a tear , sharp and splitting, raced from her chest to her fingers. Not simply pain, but more like being ripped open. Peeled. Like something hooked her soul and yanked, unwilling to let go.

Cold surged up her spine. Her breath caught in her throat before she could scream. Liked being dragged underwater by something with too many hands. Then a vision, no—a premonition? A flicker, then a rupture. She was elsewhere. 

Peter.

Not now. Not here.

Blood sprayed across pine needles.

Peter—eyes wide, mouth choking, no sound.

On his knees in the dark. 

Body withering on cracked earth.

Peter—hands clawing at his throat, dirt packed beneath his nails.

Veins bulging. Eyes wide. The look of a man dying afraid. A hint of red orbs somewhere. 

A scream frozen between his lips.

Then silence.

Peter—fell forward into the dirt. Unmoving. And gone.

Mitena stumbled back, breath torn from her lungs. She yanked her elbow back.

Her fingers buzzed like they’d been in a socket. Her vision blurred at the edges. She tasted iron in her mouth. But the world returned all at once.

Peter blinked. “You alright?”

She tried to answer. Couldn’t.

It wasn’t supposed to feel like this.

Before, the visions were survivable. Tame. Now they hollowed her out. Left her gasping.

This wasn’t just her maternal side’s legacy. Something had changed it. Twisted it. Before, the visions came through like fog. Manageable. Terrible to feel the presence of death, yes, but never this violent. This was different, it had claws and bite.

What the hell is happening to me?

She managed a weak nod. “Yeah. I’m fine. Jus’ didn’t eat.” she said, barely a whisper. 

Peter tilted his head, worried. “Ya sure? You look like you seen a ghost.”

She forced a nod to keep from crying. “What were you sayin’ again?” 

He moved from foot to foot in his spot, awkward again. “No pressure, but, uh…you thinkin’ you might come later tonight?”

She should’ve said no. Should’ve run. But the word yes tumbled out before she could remember what her body just felt.

Mitena couldn’t help but think, If I stayed alone, I’d lose myself to that vision. Maybe company would steady me. Even if just for a night.

Peter smiled brightly, a pleased smile gracing his handsome features.

But something in her chest recoiled from her answer. 

☾ *** ☾

The trees leaned in close in the dark, and what would’ve been a twenty-minute trip always took longer after sunset. Nearly a mile of unmarked trail wound from the market to the Turner’s land, every step of it was shadow-thick and unnervingly quiet.

Dew clung to the hem of her dress. Her boots slipped in the mud that sucked at her heels. A branch snapped somewhere too far to be seen. She quickened her pace, hair unraveling from her low twist, loose strands clinging at her temples.

This part of the woods didn’t welcome travel after dusk. No lanterns. No path markers. Just a narrow trail carved by memory and repetition. The kind you could lose if you blinked too long.

Peter’s death, no, vision, clung to her skin like something sour. And worse than knowing was the silence. The weight of carrying it alone. No one to really tell without sounding crazy.

She wiped her palms against her dress. They still tingled. Her hands shook and the nausea crawled up her throat.

The night around her was wrong. Not silent, but strange stillness lingering between the sounds of nature.

Why the fuck didn’t I think to bring a torchlight? All these disappearances and she thought she’d be fine raw-dogging it through the trees?

Mitena liked to think of herself as smart, or at least smart enough to survive a horror movie. To be the final girl, the last person of color , left standing in a slasher film. This walk was proof she’d be dead before the credits.

As she rounded a bend, fog pooled low across the earth. Her thoughts too loud in her head. A crow called out, sharp and singular. She jumped, and then froze. Get it together, idiot. 

Then—

“ Evenin’, darlin’ .”

The voice didn’t come from ahead. Or behind. It came from the dark itself.

Low. Smooth. Southern.

But beneath it, ancient. Feral . Wrong. Like it had worn many voices and finally found one that fit.

She froze. Pulse thudding in her throat. 

“Who’s there?” she called, louder than she meant to.

No answer. Not at first. Just the moon as a silent witness and the trees listening.

“Didn’t mean to startle you, sweetheart.” The voice came again, velvet-wrapped and unhurried. 

“Funny,” the voice drawled. “I was just thinkin’ the woods were too quiet tonight. Ain’t it somethin’? Night this still, and I stumble into you.” Like he summoned her by thought alone.

She didn’t respond. Her fingers curled tighter around the basket. Her eyes scanned the trees.

There —just beyond reach, cloaked in shadow.

He kept going. “Could call it fate. Could call it foolishness.” A hush followed. “But I think I’ll call it lucky.”

That did it.

Her jaw tensed. “You always pick up conversation with women in the woods?” she snapped. “You a stalker or somethin’?”

“If I were stalkin’, you wouldn’t’ve heard me.” Then a pause. “Besides, I only wanna pick up conversation with you .”

That should’ve scared her more than it did. It didn’t.

The way he said it, slow and certain, it settled somewhere low in her chest. Then, lighter, almost teasing, “You got a name?”

She hesitated. Every rational part in her pulsed don’t tell him . 

He drawled, “Reckon I’d sleep better knowin’ it. ’Less you’d rather I jus' call you mine.”

She hesitated and he urged again. “What’s your name?” With a quiet sense of desperation twinged into his words.

The same pull she felt from her daily dreams, or nightmares, answered for her. 

“...Mitena.”

A pause. 

Then the sound of a man exhaling, like a musician finally finding the note he’d been missing. 

“ Mitena ,” he said. Revenant. Exalted. It made her shiver. “Pretty name. Feels like I’ve known it forever.” 

She frowned. But the question on her tongue withered. Something in her skin pulled tight, like her essence remembered him before her mind could.

She still couldn’t see him, only shadows. But her eyes tracked the sound of his voice, she took a half-step forward, just one. Enough to shift the angle of light. 

Then she saw it, his hand, partially visible now.

A flicker of something at the base of his finger.

Simple, a bit uneven. Metal .

Gold .

“Ain’t you got a wife to get back to?” she asked, tone sharper now. It came out unintentionally, instinctual, on her part.

Another pause. Then amusement in his tone. “Let’s just say I wore it to a weddin’ and never took it off.”

Mitena’s jaw ticked. She wasn’t sure why his response bothered her, but it did. Jealousy? Of a man she hadn’t even seen? Ridiculous.

“Well,” she said cooly, “hope she knows you’re out here flirtin’ with strangers in the woods.” 

A low laugh curled from the trees, dark and warm, dripping with trouble. “She don’t know yet.” A beat. “But she will.”

It landed differently from the rest of his words. Less flirt, more omen. The weight of it with not just confidence, but certainty.

Mitena’s heart kicked, and she stepped back again. “Whatever this is—it’s not funny anymore.”

But there was a chill up her spine. Like her body remembered standing too close to a grave. Death.

The air shifted, but she had already turned before she could analyze the feeling. She started by walking fast, then a half jog pace. 

The voice chimed in again, just loud enough for her to hear but not to disturb the night.

“Don’t run too far now,” the voice murmured. Not a threat. A tether.

She broke into a full run. And behind her, unseen in the trees, Remmick didn’t follow. As she vanished down the path, breathless and wild, he didn’t follow.

“No need to run, baby,” he whispered, softer than wind. “We’ll see each other again.”

She didn’t know him yet. But her blood stirred in recognition of him. 

That was enough for now.

And he stayed in the dark. Smiling, waiting.

☾ *** ☾

The clearing was lit by fire and laughter. Lanterns strung between pine trunks. Feet shuffling and stomping on packed earth. Someone’s fiddle crying sweet and high, accompanied by an acoustic guitar. 

Joy moved like smoke: warm, rising, slow. 

It was the kind of night Mitena had forgotten how much she missed. One full of easy grins, stories that grew taller with each retelling, and the sweet relief of not looking over your shoulder. A break from the whispers. The missing. The unease.

Choctaw folk milled in loose circles, sharing food, songs, and memories that curled up into the stars. It wasn’t grand, but it didn’t need to be.

She stood at the edge, arms loosely crossed, watching Arthur and Alice sway in each other’s arms. Soft, slow turns like the world had paused for them alone.

Back home, the children were enjoying the night under Jonah’s watchful eye. 

All was well. Normalcy , she thought. Whatever that meant now.

A slow song crept in, low, lingering strings that made folks and the trees sway. Couples moved closer. Laughter folded into softness.

She stayed at the edge, letting the warmth of one of the fire’s kiss her arms.

She hadn’t stopped shaking, but being surrounded by such joy…steadied her.

Then, a voice. “You look like you’re tryna blend into the surroundings.”

She turned. Peter . 

Braid neater than before, clothes less dust-worn. He held out two tin cups, one of which he offered.

She accepted it with a faint smile. “That obvious?”

He shrugged, sipping from his cup. “I get it. Sometimes it’s easier watchin’ then joinin’ in.”

They stood like that for a breath before he continued, “...But I say it’s time to change that.”

Mitena tilted her head toward him, “Whatdoya recommend?”

“Dancin’, obviously.” He grinned, then exhaled like he was gathering nerve. “...With me.” Then, gently, like offering nothing more than a moment, a chance, he held out his hand.

“May I?”

She looked at it. At him. Nervous at holding another hand.

And with some second guessing, she took his hand. 

It felt nice. Just nice.

They moved slowly at first, guided more by rhythm than grace. His hand was warm at the small of her back, his steps careful. 

The vision still clung to her mind. But his warm hands centered her. And right now, warmth was worth chasing.

Mitena let herself sink into the sway, the beat, and the small talk.

“I ain’t much of a dancer,” Peter murmured near her ear. 

“You’re not so bad,” she offered.

“Mm. Might be the partner.”

She smiled. Real this time. And looked deeply into his eyes, as his thumb brushed her knuckles.

Something inside her opened. Not the burn of a curse, but something gentler. Quieter. 

A gentle hum, as opposed to a sharp twisting beneath her ribs. A slow pulse behind her eyes.

A cornfield at golden hour. An eagle tattoo curled around a strong shoulder—proud, mid-flight, sharp. The look of a mighty warrior built not just for battle, but for loving. A woman laughing, corn flour dusting her cheeks, hands wrist-deep into dough. Children darted past. Barefoot, laughing, carrying sticks like spears, feathers tied at the ends. The scent of blue corn roasting and cedar smoke. 

His great grandfolk. His people. His remembrance. 

Peter’s bloodline. Carved into his skin, his essence. And for once, Mitena finally understood. She felt it all. 

It wasn’t just vision, or memory, but inheritance. A song passed through generations. Not hers, but entrusted to her, if only for a heartbeat.

Something inside her exhaled. She blinked, and the clearing returned. Firelight flickered, the stars shined brightly, and music caught the soft breeze.

Peter hadn’t noticed. Still smiling, still guiding their steps gently across the earth like rhythm was made for them. Like she hadn’t witnessed generations in a single breath.

The air didn’t hurt, her chest didn’t ache. This—this was what her gift was meant for. Not warning, or terror. But connection. A tether that honored instead of harmed. Not the jagged edge of grief.

She smiled, a real one. The first since she arrived in this strange year.

When she glanced around the clearing, Alice laughing, Arthur twirling her beneath the pines, she felt it fully. She laughed too, startling Peter. Startled herself.

For the first time ever, past or future—She felt belonging. 

Maybe this life had space for her after all. 

But then, a prickle. Subtle and something wrong. That stillness again. 

And far beyond the firelight, tucked deep between bark and shadow, someone had stilled. 

The sight of her, laughing, swaying in someone else’s arms, it burned.

But whatever watched didn’t stir.

He would wait.

Wait, and choose his moment.

Chapter Text

     THE porch creaked beneath their weight. 

Firelight still flickered from the trees behind them, distant laughter curling toward the stars. But here, on the back steps of the Turner property, the night had quieted.

Not in the ominous way it had the previous night, but in the stillness of something peaceful. 

Still in the way that made you sigh in contentment. The kind where time moved just a little slower. 

Peter, more than happy to accompany Mitena on her walk back to her residence, had decided to linger. He sat a few steps above her, a bottle of inexpensive whiskey resting against his thigh.

Mitena had tucked her knees to her chest, chin on her arms, dress carefully folded beneath her legs. Her eyes on the grass in front of them, turned silver in the moonlight.

She wasn’t thinking about anything, or for once pondering next steps. And it felt good.

“You always go quiet after dancin’?” Peter asked, voice low, interrupting the stillness. 

She smirked faintly. “Maybe. Or maybe I’m jus’ not used to people bein’ this nice here.”

That earned a quiet laugh. “And?”

She tilted her head just enough to look at him. “You’re makin’ it mighty hard to stay suspicious.”

He grinned playfully, leaning in slightly. “Guess I’ll keep killin’ ‘em with kindness.” 

Mitena gave a half-smile, then turned her gaze back to the woods.

“Funny, ain’t it?” she murmured. “You get all dressed up, spin around the fire with folks, and still end the night feelin’ like you watched it from a window.”

He glanced over, crooked half-smile forming. “That how it felt to you?”

She shrugged, “Most days do.” A moment passed, heavier than the last.

Peter offered her the bottle in response. She took it without hesitation, and sipped slowly. Sharp and malty.

The burn helped in giving Mitena enough courage to continue her train of thought. 

“I feel like I’m waitin’ for somethin’ I can’t name,” she said. “Like I was given a cell phone, but no cell service.”

Peter’s brows furrowed and he laughed, like he was trying to follow a trail he couldn’t see. “A what now? I think I need to grab that bottle from you, you’re makin’ words up now.”

Oh shit! Backtrack immediately , she thought.

Mitena winced. “Umm, I—I meant a map…like I was dropped in the middle of nowhere without a map.” She took another sip, and waved it off. “Forget I said anythin’. It’s nonsense.”

Peter smiled, leaning his shoulder against the porch bottom rail. “Nah. I like your kinda nonsense.”

Her jaw loosened. Is he flirtin’ with me?

She cleared her throat. “It’s jus’ hard to explain.” 

Her voice dropped lower. “Sometimes I wake up and feel like…like I missed somethin’ important. Or like I’m wearin a name that ain’t mine. But everyone jus’ expects me to fit into the picture.”

The air shifted, and Peter nodded slowly. All humor gone from his features. “Maybe it’s not the name that don’t fit. Maybe it’s the life wrapped around it.”

She blinked at his words. He wasn’t wrong, but hearing it aloud made it worse. From a practical stranger, nonetheless.

Another sip. Fuck it, it feels good not filter my words for once. 

She stared ahead, mind drifting to a place not there. “You ever get the feelin’ like somethin’ good about to be taken from you before you even have a chance to experience it? To really enjoy it?”

She swallowed, then, quieter, “Used to think it was just bad luck. Or me expectin’ the worst. But now…I’m not so sure.”

Peter didn’t speak, not right away. But processed her confessions. And from her peripheral he just looked at her. Really looked. Not as someone who was broken, or strange, or dramatic. 

As someone speaking a truth he recognized. 

As Peter shifted closer, the porch creaked beneath him. 

“You’re not the only one,” he said gently. “Feels like the moment I let myself want somethin’, life steps in to remind me I ain’t entitled to it.”

She glanced up at him. Their eyes held. 

No awkwardness or hesitation cushioning the air around them this time. Just two people who knew how to survive disappointment too well.

He whispered, almost as if the words escaped without his consent. “This—tonight, feels borrowed.” 

He reached out, not for her hand, but to tuck a loose curl that had escaped her updo behind her ear. Fingers lingered at her temple.

“...Can I?” he asked. “Just one kiss. Don’t mean anythin’ has to come from it.”

She didn’t say yes. 

But she also didn’t pull away. A twinge of curiosity surfacing. The need for some form of connection, or spark. 

A want to answer ‘what if’ ?

Their faces began to close the space between them, eyes softly fluttering shut. 

Then snap.

A branch. The sound coming from the woods facing the house.

Both jolted. Peter turned sharply. “You hear that?”

Mitena was already rising. Her skin prickled. 

This was a mistake , she thought.

“I—I should be headin’ to bed soon. You should do the same.”

He didn’t ask why. Just nodded. 

And that night, quiet, near-normal, and borrowed, was the last time she saw Peter alive.

☾ *** ☾

The dream snapped in half before she could get a whole lot of sense of it.

Mitena woke up with a gasp lodged in her throat, hands clutching at the sheets as if a lifeline. Sweat clung to her back despite the slightly opened window and the cool early air. 

Dawn didn’t even break. Her chest rose and fell in sharp bursts.

Something’s wrong.

It felt as if she was drowning without water. Like something had torn through her ribs and left nothing but ache behind.

Her hands buzzed, fingers twitching against the mattress. That awful, familiar, and unmistakable current.

Death-sense.

It was the first time she put a label to the feeling, and she was terrified. The overwhelming, nauseating certainty that someone’s thread had been cut clean through.

That they were no longer in this realm as living.

She swung her legs over the bed, blinked away the blur of sleep. She stood quickly, and fixed on her robe and slippers.

Outside the birds were quiet.

But in quick succession, three knocks at the front door echoed through the house.

☾ *** ☾

The knocks had woken Arthur, too. 

Three raps. Firm. Measured. The kind that didn’t belong to neighbors stopping for a chat. 

Arthur sat up slowly, rubbing the grit from his eyes, the faint blue of early dawn barely in sight. It was too early . Alice stirred beside him but didn’t rise. 

Another knock followed, then an urgent voice, loud enough to reach through the walls.

“Arthur, it’s Dennis.”

Arthur swung his legs over the side of the bed, pulled on his trousers and boots in the half-dark. Something in Dennis’ voice was wrong.

Too flat. Too emotionless. Unlike the exuberant man he knew.

By the time he pulled on a shirt, walked out of his bedroom, making sure to quietly close the door to not disturb Alice, and crossed the kitchen, the knocking had ceased. 

As he opened the door, Dennis stood just beyond the threshold.

His face ashen and unreadable in the half-light, ear-length black hair mussed beneath his hat. 

Behind him stood Willard, broad-shouldered, silver hair tied back low, and Hugh, quieter, eyes sharp with thought.

All three were older men from the Nation. Not just respected, but listened to.

And tonight, they wore their grief like a second skin.

“It’s Peter,” Dennis said, no flourish, just simple fact. “He didn’t make it home last night.”

Arthur’s stomach dropped. “Ya’ sure?”

Dennis breathed once, shallow. “I think I’d know if ma’ son walked through the front door, Arthur.” Then stopped himself, and took a deep breath, recentering. 

“His uncle said he saw him near your place, a bit after midnight. But no one’s seen him since. His mama’s worried…on the account of these folks goin’ missin’.’” 

He looked haggard, worn, and in need of a good night’s rest. A man clinging on the edge of control.

“We’re headin’ out. Search is on.” Hugh said, looking past Arthur, toward the house’s quiet interior.

Arthur glanced over his shoulder. Alice and Mitena stood in the hall, silent and wide-eyed, the conversation between the men too hushed for them to fully understand.

“I’ll come.” Arthur said, “Let me grab my hat and rifle.”

The men gave a solemn tilt of agreement in reply, and Arthur turned back to give the girls a look that meant ‘ We’ll chat later’.

☾ *** ☾

The woods were different at this hour.

Not full of life like in the afternoons, nor the hush of the night. It was a sort of breathless feeling. 

Mist clung low to the earth. The pines stood still.

Arthur walked with Dennis, Willard, Hugh, and Jon and Alton, rounding out the search line. Rifles slung over shoulders, and a coil of unease winding tighter with each step.

They’d been searching for nearly an hour. Boots heavy in the soft mud, and nearly choking on the thick humidity.

But Peter was the first thing they saw when the fog cleared. 

As if he had been waiting, in a way.

Face turned skyward.

Body crumpled at the base of a pine, half-covered in needles and moss. As if the earth had already begun to take him back. 

His throat was torn. The blood looked fresh, soaking deep into the roots.

It wasn’t the wound that startled Arthur. It was everything else. 

No drag trail. No lingering animals to finish its meal. No messiness.

Just senseless brutality. 

And Peter’s eyes—still open, wide with something more than fear.

Recognition.

“Nanapesa ,” Dennis whispered.

Willard muttered a prayer under his breath, though the words felt insignificant. 

Arthur didn’t speak. Couldn’t. Not with Dennis crumbling beside his boy, shaking like his world had been torn in two. And it had.

Arthur dropped to his haunches. Brushed pine needles from Peter’s vicinity. As if clearing it might undo the finality of it all.

And Dennis made a sound that epitomized devastation. “My boy,” he rasped. “My only boy.” 

His hands hovered, refusing to touch. Like the sight alone was burning him. 

His breath hitched, once, then twice, before it shattered. A guttural cry burst from his chest, caused by a sight not meant to be witnessed by a father. 

“No,” he sobbed, rocking forward. “No, no , no . Peter. Oh, god. My darlin’ boy.” 

The others turned away, hoping to give Dennis some semblance of space. But not Arthur. 

Arthur stood rooted, heart sinking deeper.

Dennis pressed his forehead to the earth beside his son’s body, whispering in Choctaw now. Broken phrases. Unfinished prayers. He didn’t wipe his tears, or try to stop them.

Arthur’s hands balled into fists. 

He remembered Peter as a boy, barefoot, laughing. Remembered his youthful and easy presence. Part of the community. And now part of its sorrow.

Dennis gathered Peter into his arms. Rocked him like he was still small enough to be held.

A few paces back, Hugh stood still. Gut twisting in knowing. 

The wound too clean in some places, too savage in others. A tragic puzzle waiting to be solved. And then he saw them.

Footprints. Boot mark. Deep and large. Not Peter’s, but facing his body.

Hugh moved tentative steps forward, voice hushed. “My uncle used ta’ tell stories about shadow walkers. Soul eaters. Said they crept through the woods, moved like fog.”

He swallowed, eyes on the blood-soaked pine. “We’s jus’ thought it was’ a tale. A warnin’ ‘bout the unknown.” 

He paused, but willed himself to continue. “A figure who would slither through the dark and fed on your fear.” 

Dennis finally looked up from his son and met Hugh’s gaze. Something clicked, sharp and painful, through both men’s eyes. A wave of dread then came next. 

A silence swept throughout. Like a light bulb flickering on above their heads, the puzzle was solved.

Arthur straightened, understanding fueling his next words. “And what’s left of ya’, ain’t meant for mournin’,” he said, voice hoarse. “Jus’ meant for stoppin’.”

A tense silence. 

Willard spoke next, “Two bodies gone this month. Vanished without a trace. During nights. Only blood left behind.”

Dennis didn’t seem to hear them. He pressed his face back to Peter’s hair, murmuring something too low for the others to catch. A father’s language, not meant for witness.

The others let him have it. Let the moment stretch. 

Arthur crouched beside him. “You know what this means,” he said gently.

Dennis said nothing. 

“I know…” Arthur continued, voice like crushed leaves. “I don’t wanna believe it either,” he said, “Not when it was white men goin’ missin’. But this…”

Arthur looked down at Peter’s face. Too still. Mouth parted like he was trying to say something. To give a warning.

A wind stirred, and passed through the trees. The pines rustled as if listening.

Dennis looked up, eyes rimmed red. 

“He was good. A good boy. Helped his mama with the garden. Helped me with the horses. Never raised a hand in anger. Never even killed a deer without sayin’ a prayer first.”

“We know.” Willard offered softly.

Dennis’ voice dipped low. “You sayin’ it’s the Nalusa Falaya?”

Hugh shifted his rifle on his back, his jaw tight. “I’m sayin’ what we were told. That some shadows come back wearin’ skin.”

The men fell quiet again.

Dennis rocked Peter once more, then finally laid him down. His hands lingered on his son as he folded Peter’s arms across his chest.

“If we bury him,” he said, steadier now, “and he comes back…it won’t be my boy. He’ll be somethin’ else.”

Alton, pale, swallowed out nervously, “We don’t know that for sure. The sun—if he was that, wouldn’t he have burned already?”

Dennis shook his head. “Still early ‘nough out. Sun’s barely through the trees. These woods run deep. Some things hide easy in shade.” 

Another beat passed. Then Hugh spoke what none of them wanted to. “We have to stake the body, then burn it.” 

Dennis didn’t flinch. “Then let me do it. He’s my boy.”

They built the scaffold with shaking hands, and Dennis sharpened the stake with firm ones. No one offered to do it for him. Not that he would let them.

They laid Peter on cedar branches, and poured a handful of dirt into the fire pit. Dennis whispered a prayer to the spirits and ancestors who once walked the woods. 

And then, he finally staked his boy. Whispered something as he pressed it through, with a firm grunt and push. 

Maybe a prayer. A goodbye. Not to the boy he lost, but to the spirit trying to rest in peace.

They couldn’t build Peter a grave house. No bonepickers to tend to his bones. No feast to gather the living in mourning.

All they could do was stop what might return. 

And announce the death with a funeral cry. 

It started low. Hugh. Then Willard. Then Jon. Alton. Arthur. And Dennis last.

Each voice louder than the one before. 

But none as loud, or raw, as Dennis’.

His pain tore through the trees, calling every spirit to witness his grief. Inviting the animals to join in his wail. Asking the Great Spirit to look upon the moment. 

And when the fire caught, slow and steady, then engulfing, no one shed a tear again. They stood in the smoke—waiting.

It wasn’t until the fire had burned low, until the scaffold had collapsed into itself. Until they made sure the fire held, and the last cinders dimmed out, that anyone spoke again.

Every man present understood the weight of what had been done. Of what must come next.

Arthur was the first to speak, “We start watchin’. At night. In pairs.”

Murmurs of assent filled the air. 

“No more waitin’ on signs,” Hugh said. “No more prayin’ it’s somethin’ else.”

Dennis, still kneeling in ash, didn’t lift his head. But his voice cut through. “We end whatever has the potential to do this.” It was a vow.

Willard looked down at the blackened ground. “Vampires ,” he said at last. The word felt odd in his mouth. Sour. “Who would’ve thought?”

Arthur nodded. “It’s time we remember who we are.”

Hugh met his gaze. “You think our blood still remembers how to fight?”

Arthur’s voice didn’t waver. “We’re about to find out. If our ancestors could fight these demons, we sure as hell can.” 

Resolve moved throughout the group, like something old being activated.

Willard spoke next, hesitant, questioning. “There was a man… year or two back. Choctaw. Stayed near the ridge awhile. Kept to himself mostly, but asked real careful questions.”

Arthur’s head lifted in recognition, eyes narrowed.

“You saw him too?” Willard asked.

Arthur nodded once. “Came by my place. Said he meant no harm. Jus’ asked about my family, then asked for directions out west.” 

He waited, “Had this look in his eyes…like he knew too much and trusted too little.”

A look not unlike Mitena’s, if I really think on it , he thought.

“Said if I heard news of things that walked after death…to send word. Thought him crazy at the time,” Arthur finished.

Willard’s breath hitched. “He knew?”

Arthur gave a slow nod. “Reckon he did. And if he’s still out there, we’ll need him. Every Choctaw body counts in this fight.”

Dennis met Arthur’s gaze. “Send someone quiet. Someone fast. Find him.” 

He continued, voice ragged and final, “This don’t end with Peter. They’ll be more if we’re not ready.”

Behind them, the fire crackled low, smoke curling towards the trees like a signal. The vow made permeating in the air.

Chapter Text

     IT was still early when Arthur found her on the porch, the sun not yet high enough to melt the dew off the grass.

Mitena sat with her knees pulled into her chest, eyes pointed past the trees.

But mentally, somewhere far off. Still in her nightgown and robe, she didn’t appear to be shivering in the cool morning air.

Arthur didn’t sit beside her. Just stood with his arms crossed, gaze fixed on the horizon.

He spoke without turning, hat pulled low against the rising light. “Didn’t hear you come in last night,” he said, voice too easy.

She didn’t move, or answer right away. Just blinked slow. “Wasn’t tryin’ to be loud.”

He nodded once, and let her answer settle. “Peter also didn’t arrive home.”

Mitena’s head turned, sharp. “What?”

Arthur studied her. Not accusing. Not yet. But looking for something—A crack in her voice, a shadow in her features, a look of guilt.

“Dennis, his pa, stopped by before dawn. The man you saw earlier. We was out lookin’.” He paused, “Said you and Peter were talkin’ last night during the party, right?”

She nodded, eagerly. “We talked…danced. He walked me back here. He stayed for a bit before leavin’ back to his place.”

Arthur nodded again, “Then…that makes you the last to see him.”

There it was. Not a thrust, but the slow press to the ribs.

Mitena felt her chest tighten. “What—what are you sayin’ Arthur?” She shook her head. “He said goodnight and left. That’s the last thing I remember. I—what else am I supposed to say?” 

There, the truth, but slightly submerged in shadow. Twisted.

Although, the words didn’t carry conviction like they should’ve. Mitena looked down at her hands, believing them steady. But they were trembling now, tucked tight in her sleeves.

Peter’s smile. The moment they shared. The ache in her head, and the buzzing in her hands when she woke. All things rushing back to her at this moment.

He didn’t say anything. Just stared into the woods like the trees might reveal the full truth. Arthur didn’t accuse her. Not outright. But he didn’t soften the implication either.

“...It ain’t that I think you’d hurt him,” he finally said, voice rough. Careful. “But ever since you got here…things’ve been off.” He exhaled through his nose, rubbing a hand over his stubble. 

“I want to trust you, Mitena. I do. But the way I’m seein’ it right now, some things ain’t adding up. I’d be lyin’ if I said I wasn’t scared of whatever’s followin’ you.”

Mitena’s brows pulled together. “Followin’ me?” she echoed, voice small. “What—What’s that supposed to mean?”

Arthur didn’t look at her at first. “I don’t know. Not for sure.” He sighed. “But that’s three disappearances now, since you’ve arrived.”

She blinked. “Three? I thought it was jus’ them two white men gone.”

His eyes finally met hers, “No. White woman went missin’ a night ago. Near Bull Creek.”

Mitena’s breath caught. Her mind spinning ahead to what that meant—for the town, for the Choctaw. “Shit…”

Arthur gave her a moment, but only one.

“And now, Peter.”

The name landed like a blow. She flinched.

“What about Peter?” Her voice cracked. “He walked me home, maybe he took a detour, he was—”

“He never made it.” He cut in. “We found him this morning.”

For a brief second, Mitena looked relieved. “Oh, that’s good! I wonder what happened. Probably—”

She was cut off for a second time.

“Mitena,” Arthur said, more gently now. “We found him. But…we found his body.”

The words didn’t make sense at first. They hung in the air. 

She stared at him, willing him to take it back. “...What do you mean?”

His jaw clenched, the loosened. “Dennis was with me. His boy—” He stopped himself. Throat tightening, and shook his head. “We—he shouldn’t’ve had to see him like that.”

Her throat went dry. That sour twist in her gut bloomed again, sharp and punishing. Again: The dream. The blood. The ache in her hands. 

“I—I didn’t…” Her voice faltered. She looked down at her hands like they could offer answers.

“I ain’t blamin’ you,” Arthur said. “But again, you were the last one with him. And I think you knew somethin’ was comin’. Maybe not what. But…”

She swallowed hard. “I wanted to tell someone,” she whispered to herself. “I felt it, I did. But who would’ve believed me?” Her eyes brimmed but tears didn’t fall. “I can’t even explain it without soundin’ like I lost my mind. Don’t even know what it is.”

Arthur didn’t speak, unsure of the jumbled train of thought from the distressed woman in front of him. 

Shame burned behind her ribs. “I never meant for any of this.”

“I believe you.” He said it quietly. “But I don’t think that changes what’s comin’.”

That was the breaking point. 

Something cracked open in Mitena—guilt, loneliness, the weight of knowing without understanding. That sick pulse she’d carried since touching Peter’s hand. Since the blood spilled in the bakery. With the visions of past. Since the first breath in this wrong time and world.

She rose too fast, breath shaky. “You—You think I brought this,” she said, voice splintering. “Whatever’s out there…you think it followed me?”

Some part of her already knew the answer.

Arthur didn’t respond.

“I didn’t ask for this,” she snapped, tears blurring her vision. “Didn’t ask to be dropped here like this. To feel when someone’s dyin’. To wake up knowin’ someone’s already gone. Or for these damn visions of things I don’t understand.”

Her hands clenched at her sides, trembling. “I didn’t choose any of it. I’m just—” Her voice gave out.

Arthur looked at her long, not cruel but bone-tired. Like a man who’d spent all dawn walking through fog.

“Maybe so,” he said finally. “Though, it don’t explain why it all started when you showed up.”

Her breath caught. “So you do think it’s me,” she whispered. “You think I wanted this?” She shook her head. “Peter…he was kind to me. The first good moment I had here.” Her throat tightened. “And I saw it. I saw it, and I still couldn’t stop it.”

Arthur flinched. “You saw what?” 

She froze. The first time admitting the nightmare aloud. It didn’t feel like a relief. It felt like a match to dry leaves.

Her body tensed. “Peter,” she whispered. “The bakery too. I felt it before it happened, like something tearing through my chest, and I—I didn’t understand it then. I didn’t know it was real.”

She pressed her palms to her eyes, the guilt sharp now. “And ever since that night…I swear I’ve felt somethin' watching me. Like it’s followin’ behind, waitin’ for me to turn around.”

Arthur looked out toward the trees. The same trees he’d walked at dawn. The ones that felt wrong now, too quiet.

His voice was low. “Can’t say I’m pleased to hear that. Only confirms the worst.”

That silenced her.

A bird cut through it, sharp and singular.

He sighed. “I want to believe you didn’t bring it here. I do. I want to believe you were sent here for somethin’ bigger. Somethin’ good. But people are scared. Folks are dyin’. And whatever this is, it ain’t finished.”

And when he looked at her then, he didn’t look like the Arthur she knew. Not the one who carried children on his shoulders, or cracked dry jokes over morning coffee.

No. He looked like a man trying to decide what kind of harm he was willing to risk.

And from the firm look she was receiving, it looked like he had already decided. 

Mitena’s heart dropped. She turned away, blinking fast. “You want me to go.”

Arthur didn’t answer. But he didn’t have to.

The silence said more than either of them ever could. 

With his mind decided, Arthur walked up the porch steps.

Mitena didn’t move. Her hand reached out without thinking, desperation for her future survival clouding her judgement. She caught his wrist as he passed her. “Wait—”

Arthur stilled, and so did Mitena’s mind.

The gentle hum in her body. Pleasing, almost.

A battlefield. 

Not between nations, but with humans versus shadows. A night that never seemed to lift.

Men moved through trees with ash-painted skin, buffalo robes, breechcloths, and leggings.

Silver charms braided into long hair and clothing. 

Moccasins covered fast feet.

Men brandished bows and arrows, along with sharpened stakes.

They battled against creatures, too fast, too pale, mouths red with something taken.

One voice, loud, commanding, looked like Arthur might’ve, centuries ago.

“We protect what the light forgets.”

She gasped, snatching her hand back.

Arthur stared at her, visibly shaken. “...What did you see?” He was almost afraid to hear it. Afraid she too had envisioned his death.

“Your blood. Ancestors,” she said. “Fightin’ these creatures of night. Bloodthirsty.…I couldn’t get a good sense of it. Happened so fast.”

Arthur stared, the unspoken truth trembling between them.

She didn’t ask for clarification. Too many truths in one morning. And maybe deep down she didn’t want to know.

Besides, he didn’t offer more. 

☾ *** ☾

Alice didn’t utter a word to Mitena for most of the afternoon.

She poured two cups of chicory coffee, like always, but only one made it to the table this time. 

The other sat cooling on the counter.

Mitena stood nearby, hands cradling the ceramic warmth like it might tether her to this place.

Alice also moved through the room differently now. Slower. Less eye contact. Less affectionate touches.

No soft hands brushing Mitena’s shoulder in passing.

No more casual hums under her breath with Mitena nearby.

Just silence and care in the wrong proportions.

Not cruel. Just distant.

And in some ways, Mitena thought that was worse.

She tried once, with a hopeful voice, to break the stifling lull. “Alice—”

But the woman cut her off with a tired smile that didn’t meet her eyes.

She looked like it hurt to even speak. 

“You need anythin’ for the road?” She rushed out, avoiding eye contact. She turned away from Mitena’s pained gaze, and faced the kitchen counter.

Mitena blinked. “That it?” she asked quietly. “You jus’ gonna help me pack and pretend this never happened?”

Alice’s hands froze over the countertop. She still didn’t turn around.

“I hoped it’d be different,” Alice said. Voice low, like it cost her to speak. “I prayed it would be. But I’ve got to think of my people. My Husband. My kids. What’s been stirrin’ in the dark…what Arthur told me you said…”

Mitena took a tentative step forward, her next words stinging her throat. “Didn’t we grow to be friends? Family? ”

Alice flinched. “We did,” she whispered. She turned then, eyes glassy but firm. “But if there’s a hint of danger comin’ for this home, I can’t ignore it. I won’t, Mitena.”

Mitena swallowed, grief rising like bile. “I never meant to bring anything bad here. I don’t even know what it is! You have to believe me, Alice.” She pleaded.

Alice finally turned around, still not meeting her gaze. “I know,” Her voice cracked. “But…there’s too much at risk already.”

Grabbing a dish towel, Alice wiped her hands on it, trying to look like the conversation didn’t affect her as much as it did. “...I’ll help you gather what you need. Food, clothes, supplies. Whatever you need. But that’s all, Mitena. I’m sorry.”

Mitena said nothing. Just held back tears. 

☾ *** ☾

Evening came faster than expected. 

And with it, her deadline to leave the place she had come to call home.

The sky bloomed in shades of rust and plum, heavy with the summer heat, but the weight of the Turner house made it feel like winter was near.

Mitena stood by the front door with her small suitcase clutched tight. Its worn strap irritating her hands. All her valuables, meager as they were, able to fit in her pack. And hidden carefully within her clothes, toiletries, and necessities was the worn handkerchief that started this mess.

Her hair was pulled back in a low twist. Her white ruffled collar and brown midi dress swaying gently in the breeze. Her brown leather oxfords scuffed and in need of a polish. Her eyes dull.

The weight of what was to come, the unknown of it all, sat between her ribs like stone lodged stuck.

Arthur had arranged a ride into town for her.

They’d put in a word for her to stay at Miss Clara’s boarding house for the week. At least until she figured out where next to go.

She herself didn’t know what where was yet. Just that she’d have to go.

Alice was the one who opened the door when the knock came. It shook Mitena to the core.

A man in his late forties stood on the porch, hat in hand, mule hitched to a creaking cart behind him.

“Hi, ma’am. We best get movin’ before it’s dark,” he said, and walked back to the cart to wait on Mitena.

Mitena’s eyes landed on Alice. “You still won’t look at me?”

Alice blinked. Her throat worked around words she hadn’t figured out how to say. But she stepped forward and placed a small bundle gently in Mitena’s hands. Wrapped in muslin. Bread, dried meat, nuts.

Mitena’s jaw clenched, and her hands tightened around the bundle, but finally able to make eye contact with Alice. 

And what she saw confirmed that she indeed would be missed.

Pure devastation and agony screamed from Alice’s stare.

At that moment, neither of them breathed.

Then came a set of small feet running down the hallway.

Lettie and Henry burst from the hallway, tear-streaked and wide-eyed.

Both ran up to Mitena. Lettie’s hair ribbon askew. Henry’s face showing dried tears. 

Lettie mournfully asked, “You’re leavin?” Henry looked on with an equally sad face.

Mitena knelt, one hand on Lettie’s shoulder. “Yes…it’s best this way.” Her throat bobbed. “I’ll write to you both as much as I can. So, make sure to keep practicin’ your readin’.” She weakly smiled.

“Will you come back?” Henry asked.

Mitena looked past the children’s faces, past the porch, past the horizon. And she lied, because she hadn’t had the heart to tell them the truth. “Yes…as much as I can.”

Arthur hovered in the house, carrying a babbling Nora. He didn’t come forward. Or look up much.

And when it was her time to go, her suitcase in the confines of the cart, Alice ran forward.

She hugged her tightly with tears streaming down her face, and whispered her last words into Mitena’s ear. 

And that was that.

The road into town was quiet. 

The cart creaked in rhythm, a repetitive song echoing in the approaching dusk.

The driver didn’t say much, not that he needed to. Mitena kept her eyes on the trees.

But just past the old cotton press, the wheel on the cart cracked. A hard snap.

The mule startled, cart lurching to the side, and Mitena’s body pitched forward with a gasp. By the time they steadied, the driver had already hopped off, inspecting the damage.

“Wood’s split,” he murmured. “Damn thing. Should’ve checked on the axle this morning.”

He knelt beside it, running a weathered hand along the break. “Ain’t nothin’ I can’t fix, but…I’ll need time.”

Mitena glanced around. The road ahead empty. “How long?”

He shrugged. “A couple of hours, more or less, if I can make the spare hold.”

They lit a lantern. He set to work with a small hammer and a box of tools pulled from beneath the bench inside the cart. 

Mitena sat on a felled log near the edge of the road, and occupied her time with a book on medicinal knowledge Alice had let her take, free of charge, from the shop. Her heart pulled at the thought.

Time dragged, and with it the sky bruised to ink and the twinkle of lights shone above.

Finally, the fix held. 

“Good enough to get us the rest of the way, ma’am,” the driver said, wiping sweat from his brow.

They rolled into town just after eight. Streets not quite empty yet, with folks lingering from one location to the next, and lights were off in most windows.

The cart slowed near the boarding house, Miss Clara’s place, lantern still glowing in the front window.

Mitena’s mind still spinning with the ache of her goodbyes.

She climbed down, with the helping hand of the driver, and shoes landing with a soft thump against the gravel.

The driver reached for her bag on the floor of the cart, and then stopped. His eyes fixed on the road behind them.

Mitena followed his gaze. 

Torchlight.

Not just one. But dozens.

Coming fast on horseback from the edge of her vision. 

Men. Hoods of white.

The Klan.

The driver whispered a curse and jumped. “We need to move. Now!”

Mitena’s mouth went dry. “Where—”

But the wind shifted, and then screams echoed in the town. Desperate and scared.

Suddenly, more cries. Sharper, more guttural. Nothing that sounded human to Mitena.

The horses on the cart reared, panicked by something unseen.

Mitena quickly grabbed her suitcase, stumbled back toward the boarding house steps as the driver bolted down the alley to their right.

More torchlight spilled in from the north road.

And within it, shadows. Not men with hoods. Figures that moved wrong. Too fast and too quiet. Too primal.

One passed close enough for her to see its face. 

A white person. Blood smeared across the jaw. Eyes empty, gleaming faint beneath the glow of the gas lamps and firelight.

Too fast and blurred for her to process the glimpse.

Mitena’s breath caught. She ducked behind the corner of the house, eyes wide, heart battering her ribs.

With her bag pressed tightly to her chest, she knew it was only a matter of time before she was found. She took a deep breath, and ran from her hiding spot.

She hadn’t meant to trip. If anything she felt as steady on her feet as she ever could’ve been.

But she heard the gravel scuffle with heavy steps, and she hit the ground hard, knees scraping in the process. 

She rolled onto her back, suitcase still clutched tightly as if it were protection, footsteps thundering behind her. 

She’d been tripped.

Heavy and sloppy steps stood menacingly over Mitena.

“Thought I saw you sneakin’, you filthy half-breed bitch,” a voice spat.

A man in a hood, eyes wild with heat and hate, concealing his identity. But the voice rang clear. 

The man from the market the day I met Peter , she thought.

He stepped forward, and Mitena crawled backwards. He was enjoying the power. Her fear.

“We meet again, under better circumstances.” He smirked.

She crawled back another step, breath catching, gripping her suitcase even tighter.

“They say it’s the Injuns takin’ good folks. God fearin’ men and women jus’ goin’ missin’.” He spat near her feet. “Always knew y'all were dangerous. So it’s time your people, and you, were taught a lesson.”

Then he lunged, as fast as his clumsy body could take him. It was when he landed on Mitena’s body that her ‘fight or flight’ response kicked in.

She swung her suitcase as hard as she could’ve at his head.

With a sickening crunch, the hooded man screamed in pain and rolled off her.

“You fuckin’ bitch!” He yelled in agony, grabbing his bleeding scalp. 

Mitena quickly stood up to her feet and looked around for an escape like a cornered animal. All exits screamed danger.

The man quickly staggered to his feet, still clutching his head, and took wobbly steps towards Mitena. 

But a sound interrupted his actions.

A low growl. A blur of white, not robes, but skin again.

The man barely had time to turn before he was yanked backward, screaming. His body dropped to the ground, revealing a flash of red hair, a pale and gaunt figure, and lips pulled back over teeth too long, too sharp. 

Blood soaked chin, like a child who had eaten a meal messily. 

Mitena stumbled back, her breath caught in her throat. Piecing the description of the lost man from the bakery murders provided by the newspaper.

Jesse Williams.

She flinched at the wet snap of the Klansman's shoulder tearing from the socket. 

Crouched over him, and now attacking his neck viciously, Jesse didn’t stop until the body beneath him stopped twitching.

Mitena hyperventilated at the sight, and Jesse lifted his head.

Glowing white eyes met her shocked ones.

She moved back briskly, hands trembling, gripping her suitcase as if it could be used as a weapon again.

He stepped forward, and sniffed the air once.

Then twice.

“You…” he rasped. “You smell like him.” But soon he looked confused, “...of past and death .”

His body jerked slightly, like something inside him was pulling him in another direction. 

Mitena backed into a brick wall. Her chest rose and fell too fast. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t breath, but she managed to utter, “Who’s him?”

Jesse titled his head as if listening to an unknown force. “He’s lookin’ for you.” His voice was hoarse, guttural. “Go on now. Before this one wakes.” 

She looked down at the man, limp and torn. What did he mean wakes?

And then he vanished, blurred into the shadows like a gust of wind into the nightmarish scene of violence occurring around her.

Mitena stood, shaking, everything too loud and silent all at once. 

The man who’d tried to kill her, and do worse, lay slumped in the gravel. 

But all she could hear was Jesse. 

He’s lookin’ for you. 

The watching eyes at night?

She couldn’t help but fixate on the feeling of death radiating off Jesse’s presence.

But that was something to analyze another time.

With her suitcase, her legs moved before the rest of her caught up. She didn’t know where she was running, only that she needed to leave. Now.

Clarksdale. Find the conjure woman. Annie.

Alice’s voice echoed like prayer and command. That was all she had now.

She slipped into a back alley, shoes slick with something she didn’t want to name. One breath, then another. Then she ran.

She didn’t know if safety was guaranteed. But she did know her time here was done.

☾ *** ☾

From the opposite end of town, they came. 

Faces streaked in ash and red clay. Rifles slung over backs, and stakes gripped tightly in fists. Some bore silver charms tucked into braids or tied to belts. They moved with rough rhythm, half memory, half instinct. 

Like ghosts walking the path of their grandfathers.

Not soldiers—not yet. 

Choctaw men. Protectors.

Arthur led them. Dennis followed in second. Willard, Hugh, Alton. Then few others, who stood together in smoke and watched Peter burn.

They moved like they were protected by the moonlight. 

A shriek sounded in the distance. And then chaos.

A white-clad figure lunged from behind a building. Too fast, too hungry. Its mouth opened in a guttural wail. 

But Arthur’s rifle split the wail in half. They didn’t stop to gawk. Dennis already moving in, driving a stake through its heart before the turned Klansman’s body could twitch. As if a primal switch flipped.

They continued to move. 

Two more of the creatures surged from the streets, eyes gleaming like mirrors.

Hugh caught one in the chest with a stake. Alton drove his stake into the head and heart of the other.

This pattern continued for a while, they shot, stabbed, and burned what didn’t die on the first blow. 

And what they didn’t burn, they left to the sun.

Dawn had begun its crawl across the sky when the last flame died down.

No rites, or songs, were sung.

Just the scent of ash in the air, and new and old grievances. 

☾ *** ☾

He arrived too late.

He had waited. Too long. Out of miscalculation. 

She hadn’t left yet. He could feel it then. But by the time the blood and his hive called him forward, the tides had turned and all had been lost. He had learned throughout centuries it was best to pick his battles properly. 

He stayed away.

The sun had just begun to slip between the pines. Not enough to burn him, yet, but enough to make his skin smolder. 

Remmick found himself steeped in shadow, eyes adjusting to the haze of the smoke coming from town.

Ash, blood, and char.

The bodies were gone, already burned in scattered heaps.

His hive. 

Fledglings that were sloppy, starving, and turned too quick by Jesse and Lem—who too were gone. 

Idiots. 

But they were his. 

His jaw tightened, not in grief. In rage.

They’d been slaughtered. 

His fingers curled at his sides, fury blooming towards the sunrise. The scent of her, wild and warm, already slipping away.

“You think you can run from me, mo chroí?” he whispered, voice low. And he turned from what was lost.

Let the sun have this hour.

Night would belong to him.

Then he’d come for her.

Chapter Text

     THE road shimmered with heat, even in the early hour.

The wind whistled low through the cotton fields and cracked fences, and the morning sun beaming its blistering rays on anyone unfortunate enough to catch them.

Mitena’s steps were uneven, one shoe long lost, and the other worn to its sole and dangling from her hand. Her calves ached, and she was sure blisters had already started to form along the bottoms of her feet.

She walked barefoot down the last stretch of road into Clarksdale. The hem of her dress was ragged with briars and torn. It clung to her sweat-soaked skin like a second layer, and dirt streaked high on her calves. Her hair was wild and loose from when the wind had blown too sharp the night before.

She’d left Pearl River just after nightfall. Walked five hours to Marydell with only the stars and her thoughts for company. Took breaks when her legs gave out—one of them beneath a broken fence post, where she almost didn’t stand up again.

Somewhere past two in the morning, a woman with a baby in the backseat offered her a ride in a produce truck heading halfway west. With kind but wary eyes, the woman had spotted Mitena on the side of the road and said, “Ain’t safe for girls out this far.” 

Mitena nodded, hopped into the passenger seat, and cradled herself in silence until the woman dropped her off as far as she could.

A few towns later, a farmhand with a mule cart waved her aboard. Didn’t ask questions, just gave her a canteen of water and said, “You look like you seen the devil.” 

She didn’t reply, but offered a weak smile. He let her ride in the back anyway, beside crates of green tomatoes and rusted tools. She rode in silence, the image of Peter and the Turners burned behind her eyes.

By the time the wagon dropped her at the final stretch to Clarksdale, the sky had begun to warm.

No shoes. Dress torn. And her body moved only because it hadn’t remembered how to stop.

Still, she walked.

The air already felt heavy. Cotton hung limp in the fields. Birds were quiet. A fox crossed the road ahead and didn’t look twice.

Clarksdale rose slow on the horizon. Not welcoming. Just... there. A town that held too many ghosts and not enough places to bury them.

She crossed the edge of town just as a screen door slammed somewhere in the distance. A child coughed behind a shuttered window. A crow tilted its head from a wire, watching her pass like it recognized the scent on her skin.

The scent of death.

It clung to her now, not metaphorical, but real and humming. Her power had grown louder since the chaos at the rez. Since Peter. Since the blood-soaked bakery floor. Since her banishment by the Turners.

It buzzed in her teeth. In her palms. In her nostrils. In her sight. In her ears.

Now, the cotton fields stank of rot. 

A dying dog barked behind a butcher shop, and she felt its death tremble in her lungs like it was hers.

Farther down, a baby’s thin cry from inside a shack made her stomach twist. It wouldn’t live through the week.

It was like she was walking through a world already half-dead. Decaying. And she wasn’t sure if she was losing her mind.

She rubbed her arms and kept walking. There was no plan. Only a name. 

Annie.

She asked around gently. Asked like a sinner asks about absolution, half-scared and desperate. 

Mitena was careful not to bring too much attention to herself, careful not to speak too loud. But it was hard to go unnoticed, looking the way she did.

“Is there a healer in town? Someone who helps when the doctor won’t?” 

Most folks looked away. A few stared. 

An older Black woman wrinkled her nose, spat on the ground, and told Mitena not to go pokin’ around in things not god-like . She crossed herself and turned away.

Finally, a younger man at a corner store gave her a long look, then jerked his chin toward the horizon—down a dirt path that veered left past a fruit stand.

“You’ll know when you see it.”

Mitena thanked him and made her way.

She found it an hour later. The shack sat at the edge of the woods. Slightly crooked, dark wood half-swallowed by creeping vine and ivy, porch sagging. Jars lined the porch steps, filled with dark herbs, salt, and what looked like teeth. 

Wind chimes made of silver and bone clacked in slow rhythm against the eaves. Candles burned low behind the windows. Along with something else.

An ache in the air. Like the place remembered every cry, outburst, or joy that had ever occurred within its walls. 

Mitena stepped to the fence surrounding the property. Stood still at the gate. Unsure what to say. Unsure why she’d even come.

But before she had a chance to ponder more, the front door swung open. 

Tall, broad-shouldered, her presence filled the doorway before her voice did. Her skin was deep and luminous, catching what little light leaked through the tree canopy. A faded indigo dress clung to her generous frame, squared-neck and worn soft at the seams. Her hair pinned back in thick coils, and she wore long earrings that swayed as she moved. Around her neck, strands of turquoise hung in deliberate patterns. 

The woman didn’t smile. Didn’t squint. Just looked. 

Silence passed as neither of the women spoke.

“You lookin’ for somethin’...or trouble?” Her voice was firm, unwavering.

Mitena opened her mouth. Then closed it. Her throat ached with dryness and dread. “I…don’t know.”

That earned the faintest arch of an eyebrow.

Mitena shifted her weight. “I—” She hesitated, then tried again. “I don’t even know if I’m in the right place. A woman told me to come here.” A pause. “To Clarksdale. And to find someone named Annie.”

The name dropped like a stone between them. If it meant anything, the woman didn’t show it.

The woman didn’t move, just let the quiet stretch long enough again to make the leaves start whispering again.

She didn’t blink, and quickly bit out, “Who told ya’?”

“Alice Turner. From Pearl River.” 

A flash of recognition. Then, “ Well. Ya’ found me.”

Mitena swallowed hard. She couldn’t tell if that was a welcome or a warning.

The woman, Annie, stepped back from the doorway, just enough for the smell of catfish and cornbread to waft out. Mitena’s stomach grumbled loudly. 

“Door’s open. Or you can stand there all day if you like. But close the gate behind you either way.” Annie’s voice wasn’t impatient, but it didn’t wait either.

Mitena hesitated, half from stubbornness, half from fear she couldn’t name. Her feet throbbed. Throat burned fiercely. Her thoughts blurred from hunger. The idea of stepping over the threshold sounded too tempting.

Still, she didn’t move.

“I’m not…lookin’ for charity,” she said. “I ain’t here to take space.” Thoughts of Alice and Arthur swirled. Their kindness. Their banishment. Her hurt.

Annie squinted at her, then stepped fully into view on the porch.

“Mm. You one of them that think sufferin’ makes you righteous?” she said. “And I ain’t offerin’ you much of nothin’. But I’ve seen folk come through with less sense and more pride. Don’t make ‘em holy. Just makes ‘em hungry.”

Mitena’s voice came low, heat fanning her cheekbones. She felt like a lectured child. “I just—just need somewhere dry.”

Annie nodded once, slow. Like she didn’t care to argue with unreason. “Shed out back. Roof ain’t caved in yet.”

Mitena dipped her head and shuffled past the gate, suitcase in hand.

Before she reached the edge of the yard, she turned back. Annie still stood on the porch, arms crossed, watching. 

“Thank you,” Mitena whispered. And then barely audible, “My name is Mitena.”

Annie’s voice carried like someone who never needed to speak twice.

‘Mitena, then.” She simply acknowledged. 

☾ *** ☾

The shed leaned toward the earth like it was tired of standing.

One wall sagged under the weight of ivy grown wild, the doorway half-deteriorated, nails jutting from splintered beams. 

But, it was dry. And empty.

Mitena stepped inside, her shadow bending across the dirt floor. Light filtered through cracks in the walls, thin and dust-flecked. Turning the air gold in places, gray in others. It smelled of mildew and rust, but not rot. Not death. And for that, she was grateful.

She settled in a corner with her back against the wood, suitcase nearby. Her skin was still slick from travel, the dried sweat gone cold against her arms. But the stillness of the shed brought strange comfort.

No voices, no watchers, no questions. 

Just the creak of old timber adjusting to her weight, and the slow, rhythmic scrape of pine against the roof outside.

She sat still for a long while. Let the ache settle in her bones, and in her heart. Let the buzzing and humming of her gifts, or curses, dull to low, steady thrums. Still present, but bearable. And for the first time in hours, she exhaled without shaking.

Her eyes fluttered shut. 

And when they opened again, it was dusk. Light had shifted to copper. Shadows stretched long across the floor. Her neck ached from the awkward sleeping position, and her stomach growled.

When the pain became too much to bear, she stood heavily and made her way to the door, hoping to scavenge for berries in the woods.

Swinging the door open, Mitena almost didn’t see it.

A bundle on the ground.

A blanket folded around what looked like cornbread and smoked, dried meats. A canteen of water beside it. A small jar, corked tight and labeled in dark, slanted script:

Good for aches and blisters.

                        - A. 

She didn’t touch it right away. The offering reminded her too much of Alice and their last meeting.

Only after the sun dipped lower, after the cicadas began their ritualistic screams, did she rise to carry the food, water, and jar inside.

She wasn’t sure if she could accept kindness yet. But she kept the jar close.

By nightfall, Mitena ate what she could stomach. Half the cornbread. Some of the meat. The canteen water tasted like copper and creek stones, but she drank it greedily.

And the silence of the night reminded her she didn’t belong to anything anymore. Not Pearl River. Not Clarksdale. Not even this time.

The grief behind her ribs swelled. Aching not just for what she lost, but for something else. 

Back in Pearl River, she had felt it. Him.

Eyes like heat on the back of her neck at night. A presence thick as syrup. Not a man, nor a beast. But something in between.

She grabbed the blanket. Tried to make herself comfortable on the hard ground. Wrapped it tight around herself.

And in her dreams, he came.

☾ *** ☾

18th Century - Spain

The cypress grove steamed with the weight of rain just fallen. The scent of crushed herbs clung to moss, and the summer night air buzzed with the wingbeats of dragonflies. The Spanish heat was stifling.

She was running barefoot.

The hem of her chemise was wet with brine and soil, mud-streaked, clinging to the curve of her thighs. The linen clung to her breasts with every heavy breath. Her loose curls fell wild and untamed down her back.

Branches clawed at her arms as she pushed through the thicket, leaving bloody streaks behind.

She didn’t look behind.

Because she knew he would be there.

But she heard him nonetheless. Footsteps. Riding boots sinking into mud-slick ground. Low, joyful whistling. Not threatening, but certain.

Not hurried. Not cautious.

Claiming.

Moving like he already knew her movements by heart.

And when his voice came, low and half-feral, it trembled through her spine like thunder buried deep in the earth.

“There y’are.”

She froze. She didn’t turn. Not yet. Her breath caught. Her skin already hot. She should’ve known better than to run.

But she always did. And still, he came.

His voice, accent curled around the consonants, old and low. Foreign, but distinctly Irish. It sounded like peat smoke.

“Took my soul with you when you ran, didn’t you?”

The words weren’t metaphor or poetry. Just fact.

His shadow moved, too confident and sure across the swamp light. Then—

His hand on her waist. Flesh to flesh. Hands splaying like he was re-memorizing how she was made. Like he needed to relearn her body by touch alone.

The calluses rasped against her skin through the thin material of her loose-fitting sheer white cotton gown.

He pressed into her from behind. His fingers spread across her stomach.

“I should chain you to my body,” he murmured, voice curling in her ear. “Keep you where I can see you. Always.”

His lips skimmed her temple. His breath, a brand.

She tried to speak, a plea or sharp demand to unhand her, but his other hand was already sliding up. Skimming her ribs. Her breast. Pausing at the hollow between her collarbones.

“They can burn you. Bury you ten feet down,” he whispered, voice lower now. “But I’ll crawl in after you, a rún. Tear the roots up with my bare fuckin’ hands.”

“They said you were a curse. A snare. Said it was weakness to want you... to love you.”

His voice cracked—not with fear, but with longing. Mania.

His nose brushed her jaw. He took his time.

“Weak?” he laughed, sharp. “No, mo chroí. You made me ravenous. Made me kneel. Ain’t weakness when a man’s ready to kill god, time, and everything that stands between me and your cunt.”

She shuddered.

His fingers dipped lower, grazing the swell of her hip, anchoring her against him. She felt him. Hard, insistent, pressing into the small of her back like a promise.

“Y’don’t willingly get to leave me in this life, either.”

Then his hands, her personal ruin, pushed her forward by the waist, until the front of her body hit the bark of a tree.

“I didn’t ask to be followed,” she snapped, though her voice trembled. “I never do.”

One hand slammed to the bark above her shoulder. The other wrapped hard around her middle, pulling her flush to him. She could feel the shape of him. Thick. Ready. Furious.

His hand rose to her throat, not squeezing, just holding. Commanding. His.

“You still feel this. Us. I know you do.”

His mouth dragged across her jaw, ready to devour her.

“Say it, a stór. Say you still feel it.”

She didn’t answer. Her throat had locked.

He chuckled, bitter and rough. “Ah. Still stubborn.” His accent wrecked with hunger, syllables dragging like teeth.

He ground against her backside, rough, possessive. No pretense. Just need. His cock pressed hot against the fabric of her chemise.

Her breath hitched.

“You think I don’t feel it?” she bit out. “Every time I breathe, I feel you. Like a thorn I can't pull out.”

“You said you’d come back to me,” he rasped against her temple. “I burned villages for you. Slit throats for your memory. Spat in the face of your enemies and every coward that dared touch you.”

His grip tightened. “And you think I won’t do worse this time?”

She shuddered. Not from fear, but from the unbearable weight of it.

“I never asked you to.”

He growled and shoved her shift up with one hand, rough, impatient, like he’d ripped it off her in other lifetimes and didn’t care what stayed whole in this one.

Her bare ass met the air. Then his hand. Hot. Possessive. Shaking.

“Ah!” she gasped at the sharp slap.

“Still mine,” he murmured. “This time,” he said, grinding into her, “you don’t get to slip away.”

“You shouldn’t—” she tried, but it died in her throat. “You always come back...I always let you.”

He kicked her feet wider. “Aye, and this time, I’ll take your yes before you think to give it.” His cock pressed hard between her thighs. Thick and leaking through the rough wool of his breeches. She gasped as he rutted once, slow and filthy.

“You feel that?” he whispered. “Been hard for you since I felt your breath again. Doesn’t matter the century. My cock knows the path to you better than I know my own bloody name.”

Her fingers curled into the bark. He whispered her name like he’d said it across lifetimes.

“Milena.”

His fingers slipped between her folds, hot and soaking.

“Hells,” he rumbled, voice shaking. “Look at you. This fuckin’ cunt…drippin’ for me already, aren’t you?”

She whimpered as he rubbed slow, hard circles over her clit, then slid two fingers inside without hesitation.

“That’s it, that’s it,” he hissed. “Open up, love. You remember. You fuckin’ do. No matter what time they drop you in.”

Milena arched back into his hand, already quivering.

“Please—”

“Oh, please?” he chuckled, nipping at her neck. “Beg, Milena.”

“Please, please, please…” she gasped, forehead to bark. “I need it—I need you. I want you so deep.”

“Oh, listen to you. Soundin’ so pretty beggin’. Wasn’t I always the only one made you break like this?”

As if in a trance, he pulled down his breeches, spat into his palm, slicked his cock, then pushed into her with one brutal, devastating thrust.

Her cry rang out through the trees.

“You belong to me in every world. Every ruin. Every fuckin’ grave. I’ll teach you how you loved me.”

Milena whimpered. Part pain, part pleasure, part memory.

“I dreamed of your voice before I had words for it. I dreamed of your hands and thought I’d lost my mind.” she moaned.

“That’s it, love,” he groaned, voice gutted. “Let your body remember what your head’s forgotten.”

He continued. “Takin’ me so fuckin’ good. You were born for this cock. You were. Your body remembers who it was made for.” 

The thrusts turned cruel, then reverent, then cruel again. Not chasing pleasure, chasing remembrance.

She screamed, eyes rolling back. “Make me remember, then,” she hissed. “Make my body remember your name.”

“Scream for me. Let the whole fuckin’ world hear you, Milena. Let ’em know you’re back where you belong.”

He fucked her like he was reclaiming territory. Deep, brutal thrusts that tore moans from her lungs. His hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise across lifetimes.

“So tight,” he gritted.

He leaned in, licked sweat from her spine and the blood from the cuts on her arms.

“Gonna come in you so deep it follows you into the next life. Gonna make sure no man ever fits but me.”

She clenched around him. He groaned, deep, broken, and desperate.

“Say it,” he snarled. “Say you’re mine. Say you’ll stay. Say it before I burn the fuckin’ world down.”

She choked on a sob, nails digging into bark. 

He stopped, earning a groan of protest. “Say it, Milena.”

Her hand slammed back to grip his thigh. “I’m yours! Mierda, I’m yours! I hate how good it feels. I hate that it always feels like home.”

“That’s right. You think death could keep y’from me?” he growled, thrusts gaining in speed.

“I kissed your corpse in the 1400s, love, held you in my arms while the blood was still warm. Watched ’em burn your name off parish records in France. Built fuckin’ churches I meant to desecrate, just so you’d have somewhere to rest. You’re mine.”

She whimpered, spine arching, his memories crashing into her own half-formed one. Phantoms of wars, fire, names she shouldn’t remember but did.

“That’s it,” he growled. “That’s my girl.”

“Fuck me like you mean it, then,” she screamed.

He did.

He slammed into her, unwavering and savage, again and again. Until he came with a roar, spilling inside her, hips jerking, lost to it.

“Look at you,” he whispered against her ear, fucking her slower now. Rougher. “So fuckin’ perfect like this. Cryin’ for it. You were born to come for me, weren’t you?”

His arms wrapped around her middle, holding her to him as she screamed through her own violent release and they both shook from it.

“Mine,” he whispered. Over and over. “Mine. Mine. Even if the world fuckin’ ends.”

Milena sagged back against his chest, barely able to speak.

“You’ll ruin me in every life, won’t you?” she mumbled.

He said nothing. Just held her. Possessive and quiet, like he’d won a war. Like she was the spoils.

Because even now, she knew. This man was not safe. This man would love her to ash. And she would let him.

☾ *** ☾

The shed was quiet when she stirred.

No birdsong. No wind. Just the soft lingering throb between her legs, and the ghost of a voice.

Her thighs were slick. Her chest, flushed. 

And somewhere deep, in the marrow of her bones, she longed for something she didn’t know she’d lost. 

A sob clung to her throat.

Her whole body pulsed like she’d just been kissed through lifetimes.

The worst part? It felt more real than anything else had in weeks.

Chapter Text

     WHERE does a woman place her grief, when her bloodline splits in two and neither side claims her whole?

Not in the Nation, where her father’s kin held memory like prayer, spoken low, passed on by blood, but still looked at her skin and called it too dark, too changed, too touched by somewhere else.

Not in the freedmen towns, where her mother’s people built homes beside cotton fields but kept lookout on every road. Where a single word from white men could tear it all away. Even there, some said she didn’t carry her Blackness right. Said she held herself too quiet. Too strange.

She had tried to pray in both tongues. But the hymns clashed.

Tried to listen, but the ancestors stayed silent when they didn’t know which name to call.

So the not-belonging settled.

In her joints. In the breath she held when someone asked where she was from. In the way her hands hovered before she touched anyone, always unsure if she had the right.

She carried it until the ache of being became muscle memory. Until the loneliness stopped screaming and started whispering, stay—just a little longer .

So she stayed. She carried it.

Until she stopped asking to be let inside.

Mitena rose with the weight of it still curled along her spine.

Not soreness, something deeper. A marrow-heavy grief that never quite settled. It thrummed beneath her skin as she rinsed her face in the last of the cool canteen water, her fingers trembling just enough to notice.

The shed air was thick with breath and heat. Her sweat. The ghost of a dream she wasn’t sure had belonged to her alone.

She blinked, heavy, slow. The scent of him still clung to her tongue like a name she wasn’t ready to say.

Moss. Decaying flowers. Spiced ale. Amber. 

Mixed with longing, and something close to the feeling of home.

Her thighs still ached. Her chest, too. Not in a way she could explain to herself without shame or wonder. She had dreamed of being touched, and of touching back. And when she woke, she felt it. Felt him .

She didn’t name the feeling aloud. Didn’t speak it. 

She simply dressed, spare wrap dress and ankle boots from her suitcase, and stepped out into the hush of the morning.

The ground was wet beneath her soles. Somewhere, a rooster cried out in the distance, far too loud for her mood. But this part of Mississippi held its quiet different. Unlike Pearl River, the woods here absorbed, and not echoed. Even the birds sounded cautious.

From the porch of the small home not far off, a smell lifted through the trees: boiling roots and lavender. 

Her feet moved before her thoughts did. Slow, careful. Like she didn’t want to wake something watching between the trees.

The door hung unlatched, and Mitena stepped inside. 

Inside, the warmth struck first. Then the scent.

Sage, ginseng, lye soap. The smell of a place lived-in and sacred.

Annie didn’t speak, or greet her, when she entered. Just turned, nodded once, and went back to the kettle.

A silent invitation.

She poured steaming water into two chipped cups, dropped something bark-like in each. 

Knotted and curled like a knucklebone. 

One cup was nudged across the table without looking. Then Annie sank into a rickety wooden chair, elbows on knees, and exhaled slow.

The table between them was small. Mismatched chairs. The chair unoccupied by Annie wobbled slightly. A third, off in the corner, was draped in dried herbs and twisted bundles of string.

Mitena took the wobbly seat. 

She held her cup in both hands, and let the heat steady her. 

The tea was bitter, sharp, and earthy. But there was a sweetness beneath, slow to show itself.

“Wild cherry bark?” she murmured, mostly to herself.

Annie gave a grunt that might’ve meant yes. “And slippery elm. Good for the gut gone rough.”

Mitena nodded. “Good for fevers, too. If you add licorice, it settles deeper. Calms the blood.”

That earned her the faintest rise of an eyebrow. Approval, maybe. Or curiosity. “Ain’t many folk who know that.”

They drank in silence. Not the kind of silence that begged to be filled. 

Steam curled slow between them.

Annie shifted, and pulled back a cloth from a nearby crate. She set down a large unlabeled tin between them. Inside, dark bits of dried root, folded and brittle. She opened it, and placed the roots inside smaller tins. Mitena recognized what it was.

“Black Cohosh,” she murmured, out of habit. “Takes better if grounded.” 

Annie gave a long look. “You treat folk?”

Mitena shrugged one shoulder. “Suppose so. Do—” She caught herself. “ Did at Pearl River.”

The slip earned her a glance, but no challenge. Annie let it pass.

Rain ticked against the roof. The sound was easy company. 

Mitena, restless with long quiet, looked around the room. She noted the clutter, the jars lining walls, the folded linens, and the careful absence of other hands. 

Nothing out of place. Everything placed with purpose and lived-in. Solitary, but not lonely.

“You been doin’ this a while,” Mitena said softly.

Annie didn’t look up. “You an observant one, ain’t ya.” 

She stood, pulled dried lavender from the windowsill, snipped and tied in slow, practiced motion.  The scent deepened in the space between them.

Mitena didn’t flinch from the dismissal. She watched the stems gathered, then looked down at her own cup. “Never seen it dry so deep purple before.”

“Gotta cut it when the bees still want it. Not after.” 

The words came easy for Annie. But the way she said it made it sound like more than just a rule for flowers.

Mitena’s thumb circled the cup’s chipped rim. “...You know the Turners?”

Annie kept working. “Mm. Said Alice Turner sent you?”

Mitena nodded once.

“She passed through years back. Storm season came early. Crops’d rotted, pantry near empty. Stores didn’t have the inventory. Came along like she knew I needed it, and left on her way. Left an impression, that one did.” Annie stated.

Mitena’s throat tightened. “I didn’t know that.”

“Wouldn’t expect you to. Women like that, they show up when it matters. Then let the story end there.” 

She set the lavender aside. The light caught in its petals.

Mitena spoke barely above breath. “She gave me food,” she whispered. “Gave me shelter. When I needed it most. And she didn’t ask for anything.”

The emotion caught somewhere in her chest. Too close to spilling out.

Mitena reached for a fresh bundle, and pulled it close. Cut, gather, bind. Not quite matching Annie’s rhythm. But echoing it.

Annie let her.

Together, they worked in rhythm, the air heavy with what wasn’t said.

After a while, Annie asked. “Somethin’ change? Between y'all?”

Mitena stilled. The twine dropped between her fingers. “What makes you say that?”

“You here, ain’t ya?”

Mitena breathed out. “...They stopped lookin’ at me the same.”

“They asked me to leave,” she said, quieter. “Wasn’t cruel in their intention. I get why. They were jus’ bein’ careful.”

Another bundle. Another tie.

“... Things happened. Someone died. Someone good. My friend. Not by my hand, but…” Her voice wavered. “It might as well have been.”

She focused on the stem in her hand. Like if she didn’t, the truth might unravel. 

“Air changed after that. Felt like the room didn’t have space for me no more. I didn’t wanna go. But I think—if I didn’t then….” She held back. “But something got loose that night. Something terrifyin'...that may have followed me there.”

Annie didn’t press. “Folk’ll turn cold ‘round things they don’t understand. Death makes ‘em crueler. Fear makes ‘em certain.”

Mitena gave the smallest nod.

“Don’t matter if ya hands are clean,” Annie added.  “If they think you been touched by the wrong thing, they’ll find a reason to shut the door.”

She shook out another bundle. “I seen it my whole life. They bring me what the preacher won’t touch. Don’t ask how I learned it, just want it fixed.”

A dry sound escaped her. Not quite a laugh.

“Then soon as they get what they need, I’m strange again. Sometimes evil. Depends who’s listenin’.”

Annie’s finger ran down a brittle stem, then snapped it clean.

“Ain’t no pulpit for a woman like me. Ain’t no pew neither. But I still tend to the sick. Still comfort the grievin’.”

Finally, her gaze snapped up. “That’s the deal, far as I can tell. You carry what needs carryin’, and they call it witchin’ when it don’t fit their book.”

Mitena sat quiet. Not from fear, but familiarity.

“You ever have ‘em stop trustin’ your hands?” she said eventually. “Not ‘cause you got it wrong. Jus’… ‘cause you weren’t who they expected?”

Annie paused, mid-tie.

Mitena’s fingers worked slow. “One of my daddy’s cousin’s wives said I was learnin’ wrong. Didn’t like the way I boiled fever root. Said it wasn’t how her people did it.”

She tugged the twine too tight, and the stem split.

“I told her it’s how I was taught. After that, they looked at me longer. Like they didn’t know where to place me.”

Annie’s eyes flicked over, then they looked away.

“Didn’t stop lettin’ me in. But I felt the shift.” Mitena gave a bitter smile.

“You Choctaw?” Annie asked.

“On my daddy’s side.”

“Your mama?”

Her spine straightened, the words came quiet, like she’d learned to defend her Blackness before doubt ever reached someone’s mouth. “Black. From Georgia.” 

The air changed again. Not heavy, but holding something new.

Then Mitena added, as an afterthought, “Folks didn’t say nothin’ outright. But they made me feel like I wasn’t either.”

She reached for another stem, more to steady than to work. 

“Too dark to be Choctaw. Too strange to be Black.” Her voice thinned. “Spent most of my life tryin’ to belong to both. Always end up feelin’ like not enough for either.”

Annie didn’t speak, but her movement slowed. 

“It gets in ya',” Mitena said. “Not-belongin’. Becomes the way you sit. The way you speak. The way you reach to heal somebody.”

She exhaled.

“I didn’t grow up with much. My daddy’s people were there, but always at arm’s length. And my mama… she wasn’t around long enough to teach me much. But when she was, she moved like the old ways still lived in her. Like she carried it quiet. Never explained it. Just did it.”

A soft clink. Annie adjusting a tin lid, then leaving it loose.

“Maybe that’s all I got. A kind of memory that wasn’t taught. Just stayed in the body. And I’ve been tryin’ to hold it without droppin’ it ever since.” Mitena finished. A kind of mumbled defeat.

When Annie finally chimed in, her voice was steady. “They don’t know what to do with in-betweens.”

She continued. “Me and mine come from the swamp. Back before Louisiana had roads worth namin’. Learned from the earth. Not the pulpit. We worked roots by riverbeds and used what we had.”

Her thumb brushed over a dried stem. “Grandmama taught me. Said roots don’t lie. Even when people do.”

Then, sharper. “But now? If it ain’t from a sermon, they call it Devil work. They want the cure but not the conjure. Healing without the hands that made it.”

Mitena hummed in agreement. “They want what you know. Not what you are.”

That earned a faint breath.

“Yea… What you are .” Annie studied her. It made Mitena shift. 

“I feel the split in you. Your mama’s line. Your daddy’s. One teachin’ you to mourn. The other to carry. And you holdin’ both like you were meant to.”

Mitena’s jaw worked. She didn’t speak right away. But with slow confidence, “It’s gettin’ harder to hold both sides. Like I’m stretchin’ too thin. Can’t tell if it’s a baptism or a drownin’.”

Annie bobbed her head. “You got a name for these… sides ?”

She shook her head. “Not out loud.”

Mitena gathered a breath. “But before my…friend died, it was like somethin’ opened. What used to be quiet started screamin’. And I knew. It’s death. I don’t just sense it—it pours through.”

Annie stopped moving.

Mitena drank what was left in her cup. Cold. Bitter.

“And that other part… it’s memory. I feel things I didn’t live. People I never met. But I feel ‘em like they left fingerprints in my chest.”

A long silence followed after her confession.

Then Annie stood, walked to the shelf, and pulled down a jar. Her voice softened.

“Whatever’s in you, it’s old. Like it started sacred, but got twisted somewhere. Bent by somethin’ hungry. Dark.”

She glanced back.

“Might’ve been passed. Might’ve been placed. Either way, it’s stitched to you deep. And it’s startin’ to show through.”

Annie came back to the table. Set the jar down between them.

“You ever need to name it out loud, you come to me. But don’t rush it. Some things teach you their name slow.”

With a more firm tone, she declared, “And when they do, remember, you ain’t the first to carry a weight that don’t make sense to nobody but the ones who worked these roots long ‘fore we did.”

The jar sat quiet between them. And in that silence, something stirred, low and deep, like grief humming between two worlds. Not an absence, but an echo. A knowing passed down. A weight she no longer carried alone.

Chapter Text

Early July 1932 - Clarksdale, Mississippi . 

TWO weeks passed.

The kind of time that didn’t feel real. Not like days ticking by, but something slower. Time that pooled like water in a basin. Never spilling. Never gone.

Every morning since that first knock, when Annie didn’t shut the door, something appeared outside the shed. No call, no warning. Just a chipped enamel dish left by the step, then gone again.

Sometimes it was grits. Sometimes beans. Once, canned peaches as sweet as she ever remembered them.

Mitena never saw her, but she always came. Every morning. And she was grateful. 

Just like Pearl River, she hadn’t had a survival plan. Survival didn’t come from planning. It came from the reluctant kindness of others. And here, kindness looked like space. Not comfort, not welcome, but somewhere to be left alone and think.

The shed leaned into that quiet. It was perfect for it.

Although, at night, it reeked of heat and mildew. When it stormed, water pooled beneath the cot she’d set up in the back corner, soaking the soles of her boots. She didn’t move, just curled tighter into herself, and dreamed. 

The dreams came heavy now. Slippery, seductive things. Vivid and hard to hold. A warmth curling behind her ribs. 

Fingers she always half-anticipated brushing the curve of her shoulder. A low voice whispering against her ear, saying sweet nothings. Teeth at her throat. Breath at her thighs.

And sometimes, just sometimes, a warning from her father. Of Yakni pushing her in the opposite direction of what felt so wrong and so right. 

Mitena always woke, reaching. For a name. For air. For whatever came after the dreaming. Her whole body trembling like it had been called and touched in the same breath. 

In the mornings, when Mitena showed up wet and shivering, Annie just raised an eyebrow, like she was waiting for Mitena to admit she’d had enough and ask to come inside.

But she never did. Maybe it was pride? Or punishment?

So, she stayed in the shed.

Because even with the cold and damp, it was hers.

And while it wasn’t the comfiest place she stayed, not since Pearl River, it was the quietest. 

No children thumping across floorboards. No Arthur’s booming laugh, rare and full of life. No Alice with her cutting charm.

No soft eyes. No gentle questions. No one asking if she was alright.

If she was hungry, she ate. If she was bleeding, she bandaged it. If she wanted help, she had to ask.

Annie didn’t hover, and didn’t coddle. She provided when it mattered and when it was needed. But mostly kept to herself and worked in her shop. And sometimes, without asking, she let Mitena work beside her.

It started small. Boiling cloth until it steamed clean. Sorting dried roots by feel, not name. Crushing herbs, until the smell clung to her hands. 

One night, Annie slid a tin basin toward her without speaking, and nodded toward the bundle of feverfew plants on the table, like she expected Mitena to know what to do.

And she did.

After that, it was salves. Smoked garlic clove crushed into honey for sore throats and slow lungs, prepping vinegar rags for fever, and the like.

But more often, Mitena watched Annie’s hands. How she mixed, how she strained, how she waited for the leaves to bruise before adding heat. The kind of knowledge no one wrote down. The kind that vanished once hospitals took over. 

Then, one evening, a woman came limping. Older, with a clouded eye and a blood-soaked handkerchief tied tight around her forearm, cradled close to her chest. 

Annie, who had opened the door, studied her for a moment. Then stepped back enough to let her through the doorway.

Mitena, after a moment of shock, stepped forward. She took the woman’s arm gently, and unwrapped the cloth. 

The gash was deep and crusted wrong, already starting to fester. She cleaned it with water that was boiled, cooled enough not to scald. Then dabbed the wound with honey, and wrapped it in a strip of clean cotton. Her fingers worked fast, deliberate. 

Compression. Angle. Wrap.

She’d done this before. Too many times to count. Different ingredients, but the same intention. 

It made her think of the old hospital back home. In her time. Of Lily and Samanta swapping shifts. Of bitter coffee and clean gauze and the rare relief of knowing exactly what to do.

The memory made her ache.

The woman, who she learned was named Irene, didn’t speak. Just stood up slowly once Mitena was done and reached into her apron. She pulled out a slip of pale, paper-like currency. It was oddly stiff, like it had been ironed. She also pulled out a plastic comb, teeth broken at one end.

Mitena stared, confused. 

It wasn’t like federal money, not like she’s seen, but it wasn’t fake either. The ink was faded and the paper bore the name of a cotton plantation just outside of town. 

Sunflower Plantation.

Annie took it without blinking.

Later that night, Annie explained it like it should’ve been obvious. Called it scrip. Store-only money. Landlord-issued. The kind that always circled back to the same white hand that gave it.

“Same men own the land, the store, and your debt,” Annie muttered. “But it’s what they’ve got. And I take what they offer.”

As for the comb, maybe that’s just how payment worked here. Something carried, something useful passed around.

After that night, Annie let her keep working. Quietly. Steadily. Close enough to learn, and close enough to matter.

People didn’t come for Mitena. Not at first. They came for Annie.

But every so often, Annie let the girl in the shed be the one to see them.

It wasn’t long before folks started calling her Steady Hands. Said she never flinched, never fumbled. That she could stitch cleaner than any midwife, knew how to handle women and children right, and when to speak or stay silent. Nobody knew where she came from. But they came back. One by one.

Mitena overheard it one evening. Steady Hands passed between two women on the steps. She didn’t react. And Annie didn’t say a thing. But the next time someone needed stitches, she handed Mitena the needle without looking.

☾ *** ☾

The Next Morning 

The sun was slow to make an appearance behind the clouds the next day when a knock came. 

Soft and uniform. Like whoever was behind it didn’t want to startle anyone. 

Annie was already at the table, grinding something bitter-smelling with the flat end of a wooden spoon. She didn’t look up. “Get that, would ya’?”

Mitena stood from her work at the table, sorting roots and pressing them flat for drying, and opened the door.

There stood a tall man in worn overalls and a low-brimmed straw hat, frayed at the edges like it might shield more than just his head. He was big, broad-shouldered, and had gentle eyes that seemed to squint even when he wasn’t smiling. 

Behind him stood a woman, maybe mid-twenties, with thick long dark braids falling down both sides of her head and a belly high and full under her dress. Six, maybe seven, months along.

“We don’t mean to intrude,” the man said, voice soft and sweet. “Jus’ heard ‘bout the woman ya’ll got back here with them steady hands.”  

The pregnant woman didn’t speak. But her eyes were steady on Mitena, curious and measuring. 

Mitena nodded, “That’d be me…” She looked back to Annie, who was already watching, silently asking for confirmation.

Annie gave a small nod in return.

Mitena stepped back from the shop’s doorway and let the couple in.

The man offered a small smile, shy, almost boyish on his face and size. “I’m Cornbread. This here’s my wife, Therese.”

Therese nodded simply. She held the kind of quiet that didn’t apologize for itself.

“I’m Mitena.” she said, offering a timid smile in return. “Please, sit if you’d like.” She gestured toward a bench near the wall. 

Cornbread gave Therese a glance, soft, almost seeking permission. And she moved slow as she lowered herself onto the bench. One hand stayed curled beneath her belly, the other pressed to the small of her back.

“She been feelin’ pressure,” Cornbread said gently. “Low on her back. Ain’t due for a good while yet, but…”

“But it don’t feel the same,” Therese finished for him, her voice low but firm. “Not like the other times.”

Mitena didn’t move closer, but listened, hands rested lightly at her sides.

Therese’s eyes flicked between her and Annie. “No offense, but…I’d feel better if Annie took a look first.”

Mitena nodded once, no trace of insult. “Of course.”

Annie let out a breath. “You asked for Steady Hands. That’s her.”

Something shifted in Therese’s posture. Not trust, but less braced.

Annie crossed the room and began pulling down a jar of cooling oil, muttering as she went. “If she didn’t know what she was doin’, I wouldn’t let her lay hands on no one but herself.”

Something caught in Mitena’s chest. A tight, bright feeling. Not quite praise coming from Annie, but something near to trust. And to Mitena, that meant more.

Cornbread rubbed his neck. “Didn’t mean no offense. We did hear good things from Irene.

“Irene?” Mitena asked, surprised. “How she healin’? She hadn’t been back since I last saw her.”

“She all good. Usin’ her arm a bit more now.” Cornbread said. “Said you fixed her up right as rain.”

Therese gave a small huff. “That woman always did find a way to make a scratch look like a gunshot.”

Mitena smiled, the tension in her shoulders loosening a little.

“Mind if I take a look?” she asked gently.

Therese nodded. Not quick, but sure.

Mitena moved slow, careful not to startle. She pressed her hands against the swell of Therese’s belly, one on the side, the other just below. Her face scrunched in concentration.

A beat passed. She waited, watched, and felt. The skin was warm, not tight, No sharp flinching. 

And then the baby shifted.

A warm hum stirred in Mitena’s chest. Slow and quietly building. Like breath caught between her ribs.

It came with the baby’s movement, that stubborn roll beneath her palm, and the silent trust behind Therese’s eyes.

Then the warmth shifted. The familiarity of a vision bleeding in.

A woman bent by a wide basin, lye soap biting her hands raw as she scrubbed linens along a washboard.

Another hauling a sack of cotton across a dirt yard, skirt hitched high for speed, not modesty.

A third, heavy with child, sitting on a rotted porch stoop as she twisted a strip of cloth into a baby doll, humming something low.

All three didn’t speak, but their labor spoke for them.

Not paid, not free, but living as best as they could.

Then came a rapture.

A boy, barely a man, stripped of his name. Shackled in grey. Draped in worn Confederate castoffs. Not a uniform, but a burden. Proof of servitude in war.

He hauled crates of gunpowder down a muddy trench, eyes hollow, shoulders burning.

Not a soldier. A shadow conscripted to carry the weight of war. Unwilling hands aiding a cause that saw him as cargo.

When no one watched, he knelt behind a cypress tree, fingers shaking as he tied a scrap of calico around his wrist. Soft and faded, the color of sand. 

A woman’s scarf. 

The only thing they let him keep.

He blinked toward a field of horror and closed his eyes. His mouth moved like a prayer. But he had no God left to call.

He whispered her name.

Still, the women remained. Washing. Cooking. Picking. Rocking. Enduring.

Their backs bowed, but not broken. Their songs low, but not gone.

The vision eased, but the warmth lingered. Like breath against her skin.

Not every soul opened like this. Not every touch invited memory. But sometimes, like now, it rose unbidden. As if the spirit beneath the skin was reaching back, aching to be known.

Mitena didn’t fight it, and didn’t hold on. But let it pass.

And in its place, the movement of the baby returned. Alive. Cherished. 

Mitena’s face softened. She blinked back into reality. “Feels like the baby’s just low today. Womb’s soft, not contracting. I don’t think labor’s starting.”

Therese released a breath she’d been holding, and Cornbread chuckled in relief in the corner of the room, eyes shiny with relief.

Mitena met Therese’s gaze. “You’re alright.” She looked down to her belly. “Both of ya’.”

Cornbread reached out and gave Therese’s shoulder a soft squeeze. “Told ya’.”

Annie gave Mitena a long look, something settled with a hint of softness. A knowing. Then she went back to work. 

☾ *** ☾

The bell above the door gave a soft rattle as they stepped inside Chow’s Grocery.

The air was thick with the smell of sugar, dried tobacco, and something stewing low in the back room. Shelves were lined neat, if a little picked over. 

Flour in cloth sacks. Sugar and salt in glass jars. Dried peas and beans scooped into brown paper. Soap flakes piled beside bluing and robin starch. Thread spools in various muted colors. Licorice sticks and penny candies crowded by excited children. 

A handsome man stood behind the counter in a faded apron, sleeves rolled to the elbow, a pencil tucked behind one ear. He was wiry, with toned forearms and an easy kind of charm. His hair was swept back, damp at the temples, like he’d just come from hauling something.

He was counting scrip in a little wooden tray, but as he looked up at the sound of the bell, he broke into a grin.

“And here I thought you forgot where we were. Ain’t seen you walk through this door since Moses was still splittin’ puddles.”

Annie snorted. “Don’t get cute, Bo. We’re here for vinegar and thread.”

Bo moved the tray aside, “Ain’t no cuteness here, Annie. This all charm.” He looked to Mitena, eyes warm. “And you must be Steady Hands.”

Mitena blinked, caught off guard by how causal it sounded in his mouth. “That’s what they been sayin’.”

From the hallway stepped a short woman. Slim and neat in a pale dress with clean lines and a pressed apron. Her posture was pin-straight, hands drying on a flour-dusted cloth. She moved like she had somewhere to be, and her eyes, sharp and dark, swept the room like she was already counting inventory and tallying receipts.

“Grace, honey. Look who we have here.” Bo called out.

Grace stopped in her tracks, “Annie,” she said with a short nod and a smile. Then her eyes turned to Mitena, steady and assessing. “So, this the girl patchin’ folks up in the backwoods?”

Mitena offered a shy smile. “Just doin’ what I can.”

“Hm,” Grace said. “Well. Irene’s been in here tellin’ folks you saved her whole damn arm.”

Bo chuckled. “And Irene ain’t one for modesty.”

Grace shook her head, reaching for the shelf. “Sounds like she’s two steps from startin’ a church in your name.”

Grace gestured for Bo to handle the rest. “What y'all need today?” He said.

“Vinegar,” Annie said. “And some thread. Blue if you’ve got it. She—” she tilted her chin towards Mitena, “needs some clothes that don’t look like they crawled outta the woods.”

Mitena laughed before she could stop herself. Rich and hearty. A sound she hadn’t heard in a while. “Didn’t come to Clarksdale to win no beauty contests.”

Annie, without looking up, didn’t miss a beat. “Good. You already lost.”

Mitena shook her head, still grinning. “Something clean then. Ain’t picky past that. Jus’ ring me the total and we’ll go from there.”

That made Bo laugh, full and warm. “I like her. Don’t take herself too serious.”

Grace shook her head, but her mouth twitched like it might be holding back a smile. And Annie, already moving toward the vinegar, let a small huff of amusement out of her nose. 

Grace had just turned toward the back room to grab something when the cry came. Sharp, urgent, tearing through the walls like thunder in an enclosed space.

A woman’s voice. Panicked.

Then someone shouting, “She bleedin’!”

And a thud, heavy. A body hitting wood.

Then another, closer, “Help! She jus’ dropped!”

Bo moved fast, apron tossed aside. “Ida,” he muttered. “She came in lookin’ for broth, said she wasn’t feelin’ right.” 

By the time Annie reached her, with Mitena following close behind her, Ida was crumpled near the barrel display, eyes glassy, grimaced in pain, and her dress had split at the hem, blood blooming red and dark beneath her hips. 

Children had gone quiet. Shoppers had stopped their browsing. Grace moved to corral the small crowd away from the scene and from gathering by the barrels. Her voice firm and steady, enough to keep panic from spilling within the shop.

“Couldn’t get to Mary’s mama?” Annie asked, already crouched beside Ida with Mitena at her side.

Bo shook his head. “She’s been laid up near two weeks. Fever ain’t broke. Ida didn’t want to risk it.”

The moment the words about Mary’s mama left his mouth, a shadow crossed Mitena’s face. A flicker of heat, metallic and sudden, tugged from behind her eyes and curled low in her chest.

Death wasn’t quite there. But circling.

She steadied her breath, and shook it off. There was no time to evaluate those feelings and the connection to Bo’s words.

“Annie. Bo,” Her voice came clearer and clinical now, sharpened with training. “Help me lift her to a more private area. We need space.”

No hesitation from either party.

They carried Ida through the back. Bo at her shoulders, Mitena and Annie at her legs.

The back room smelled of starch and kerosene. A basin crusted with a soap ring. Flour sacks were stacked in the corner, a cracked mirror leaned sideways against a shelf, and a single oil lamp cast shadows across the space. A faded rug covered the floor, curled at the edges, and a bundle of kindling was set in the corner. 

They laid Ida down gently on the floor.

Mitena dropped to her knees, hands already moving.

“Annie, boil some water! Bo, tear that sheet now!”

Annie lit the stove and filled the kettle. Bo grabbed linen from the shelf and split it clean down the middle, continuing to rip it into smaller pieces.

Annie took the torn pieces from him, then gave him a pointed look. “Go on now. Mind the front with Grace. We got this.”

Bo hesitated just a beat, eyes darting to Ida’s place face. He nodded and stepped out, closing the door softly behind him.

Mitena pressed her hands to Ida’s belly. The skin was too hot, too taut. No rhythm in the spasms.

Then it hit.

A thrum under her palms. Wrong. Final.

The death-sense cracked through her again for the second time in the shop, like fever, sharp and sudden. A dizzy spinning in her skull. Her breath stuttered, chest tight, eyes gone wide as the edges of the room pulsed dark for half a second, then cleared. The air reeked of copper and rot, something sour blooming beneath the starch and kerosene.

But her hands never stopped moving. Assessing pressure, tracking pulse points, working through muscle memory.

She blinked, steadying. 

The baby.

Although, there was no time to flinch.

But Annie caught it in her face before Mitena said a word. That flash of recognition between women who had felt loss before.

Mitena didn’t speak, just met her eyes, and Annie nodded once.

It was too late.

The baby came fast, too fast. Shock had taken hold of the body, muscles spasming hard enough to force the child through. Slippery and small. And still.

Gone.

Mitena caught the child, hands sure and even as her heart broke in real time. She wrapped the child in linen, careful and tender, before Ida could see too much. Annie’s face was tight, jaw clenched against the sting and shine behind her eyes.

She wanted to heal, to stop blood from flowing out and hold life in. But her body knew death before her training ever did. It stirred beneath her skin, even when her hands tried to do good.

Mitena turned toward Annie. “Help me pack the bleeding.”

Annie moved without pause.

Ida moaned low, fading, reaching for something unseen.

Mitena took her hand, held it firm. “You’re still here,” she said. “You’re gonna be alright.”

She worked fast with Annie. Compresses. Pressure. Mumbles and prayers under her breath that couldn’t be understood. Just sound and sorrow. 

After what felt like forever, the bleeding slowed.

Ida unconscious, but breathing shallowly. Mitena touched her wrist. A pulse, weak but there.

She sat back on her heels, blood across her forearms, breath shaky.

Annie reached over and handed her a clean rag. “You got her through.” 

Mitena nodded, then silence followed.

Annie looked at the bundle Mitena had swaddled, then quietly, “We’ll lay her to rest.”

They both knew what that meant. Whether by hymn or hush, salt or psalm, she'd be remembered. They’d carry her memory like a scar.

Mitena wiped her hands, but the warmth of the blood and the stench of rot stayed under her skin.

They wrapped Ida tight in the cleanest sheet, propped her gently on her side with a pillow of flour sacks. Her pulse was steady by the time they finished.

Mitena slipped a folded scrap of paper into Grace’s hand, detailed instructions to not to move Ida, to check on her every hour, and to send word if anything changed.

Grace scanned it quickly, nodded once. “Dr. Eddie’s due back tonight. I’ll have him look in on her.”

Mitena blinked, caught off guard by the name.

Grace noticed. “Dr. Eddie’s our resident doc. Quiet type, but good. Been out on call the last few days, but he’ll look in on her tonight.”

Mitena gave a small nod. Said nothing, but filed it away. “That’s good to know,” though her voice still carried the shake of the aftermath.

Grace’s voice softened, just a touch. “I’ll send those clothes and other supplies out your way tomorrow. Discounted, considerin’.”

Annie raised an eyebrow. “You got a heart in there somewhere?”

Grace shrugged. “Didn’t say free.”

Mitena chuckled, though it felt forced.

“She’ll be restin’ now,” Mitena said. “So, we’ll be on our way.”

“She got a strong will,” Annie murmured. “That’ll do more than anything we did for her.”

Mitena nodded.

“Come on,” Annie said. “We’ll take the long way back.”

They looked at Ida one last time before stepping through the backdoor.

The air outside was damp and hot. Midday heat gathered at their backs, slicking skin and softening hair edges. The walk was unbearable.

Somewhere behind the row of houses they passed, someone was stringing up laundry. Another sang while chopping wood. Life moved, even though it felt like it shouldn’t.

Annie and Mitena didn’t talk for a while. Their steps walked along narrow dirt paths behind shops, weaving past hen coops, smoke sheds, and wildflower patches growing where nothing should’ve bloomed. Every now and then, Annie would nudge a rock aside with the toe of her boot, or swat a fly from her brow. 

Her silence felt like she was walking off a bruise. 

Mitena’s arms ached. From the work, and from the weight of what couldn’t be saved.

“She was close.” Mitena said at last, voice low. “If we hadn’t been there…”

“I know.” Annie said, reply barely rose above the noise of the wind.

They walked until the path curved near the edge of the old field, where the trees leaned in like they’d witnessed too many secrets. There, Annie finally slowed. Stopped. Looked over the flat stretch of land half-burnt from last season. A brief pause followed.

“I had a daughter once,” Annie said, pausing by a split fence post. She uttered it like it still burned to say aloud. “A little girl.”

The wind caught in her dress then, flared it slightly. She didn’t move to fix it. 

“She came quiet. Didn’t cry, but she was breathin’. Jus’ barely.” She said after a pause. “I tried everything I knew. Roots. Prayers. Offerin’s.” 

Her jaw set, tight. “Didn’t matter.” She shifted her weight. Looked somewhere over Mitena’s shoulder, like remembering made her exhausted. 

“Her daddy dug the grave hisself. Not too far from the house.”

The birds seemed to chirp in sorrow, breaking the tight silence.

“Put a stone there. Pressed her hand in it with whitewash before she cooled.”

Words didn’t come. Just the sound of breathing. 

“Brings flowers sometimes. When he’s ‘round for it.”

Mitena’s fingers curled, she stepped closer.

“I’m sorry,” she said, not quite knowing what else to say within the moment. 

Annie looked at her then. Fully, and something in her guard gave way. Not all at once, but enough to let someone in.

“Not your fault, so no use in apologizin’,” she murmured, but her features softened. “...But thank you.”

And the space between them wasn’t empty. It was brimming with grief, with memory. With something older than both of them that lived in blood, breath, and sorrow.

Mitena reached out to her. Not as a nurse, or a healer, or even as someone strong, because she wasn’t. Just someone who’d lost too. She stepped forward and pulled Annie into a quiet, trembling hug. No words, just arms around shoulders, grief pressed to grief.

And Annie didn’t pull away.

But with the touch, something opened. 

A flicker in Mitena’s chest surged, and a vision spilled through.

Women grinding maize by firelight in dirt-floor kitchens, their hands worn from feeding too many with too little.

A child tucked into the crawl space beneath a porch, as white men on horseback passed. Her mother standing at the edge, making herself wide enough to block the view, and the danger.

Low songs stirred into pots of okra and rice, not just for flavor, but to soothe grief and fears.

Salt sprinkled at doorways. Haint blue paint brushed over porch ceilings to protect from evil spirits. 

A healer pressing herbs to a laboring woman’s belly, whispering scripture between every breath.

A newborn girl, ancestor to many, wrapped in dyed cloth, kissed on the forehead by elder women. Each speaking a name meant to carry her further than chains ever could. 

Mitena’s arms tightened, her own breathing hitching.

Annie stilled. She felt it. The pull.

“Whatcha see?” She asked, voice so quiet it barely lifted.

Mitena pulled back, but not far. Her voice was soft, reverent. “Your people. Wove protection into everything. Songs, food, footsteps, names.”

Annie blinked. “Hm. Reckon we had to. World didn’t leave us much else.” And she exhaled, glanced up at the sky like it might clarify. 

“C’mon,” she finally said. “Supper won’t make itself.”

☾ *** ☾

Early Evening, Just Before Sunset. Days After the Pearl River Massacre.

They burned everything.

The hive was gone. Not scattered. Not missing. Gone.

Burned down to ash by the ones who moved like warriors with old prayers on their stakes.

They were long gone, hours before dusk bled in. Long before the shadows could make him strong again. Yet, it wasn’t grief that clawed at Remmick.

It was the emptiness that came after. When there’s no one left to listen. No one left to command.

He’d misread them, those Choctaw men, thought them scattered. Thought them unprepared. He was wrong, and the scorch of that mistake still simmered across his skin. A daylight wound not yet cooled.

But the ache that drove him wasn’t vengeance. It was her.

The ache of her, threaded into all his senses.

The dirt still held memory of her footsteps. The trees bowed like they’d made space just for her. The air still carried her scent, like sun-warmed skin and stubbornness.

And something else. Earth after rain. A sharp note of green. She had always smelled like softness beneath storm.

She was all curls and contradiction.

Eyes that gave nothing away unless she wanted to. Brown, deep-set, deliberate. A mouth made for silence. Or often in Remmick’s case, breaking such silence when telling him off.

Remmick could feel it, the land hadn’t forgotten her. And neither had he. Whatever part of her had brushed this place, it hadn’t let go. And neither did he.

He followed it like instinct. Like thirst.

Mitena.

He would’ve torn the land apart for one more breath of her. Ripped bark from trees. Clawed into the roots just to touch the dirt she knelt on.

She’d passed through here. He could taste it. Heat, sorrow, and determination. And it wasn’t just want on his side. It was hunger and worship.

She was his in blood and vow. And while she had run, he wasn’t done chasing.

Even weakened, he didn’t bother masking it. He let leaves crack underfoot. Let the birds scatter. If they were coming, let them come.

And eventually space gave way to pine. Rationed light thinned between the branches, giving over to the bruise-black dusk.

But the insects shifted, uneasy. The quiet thickened. Air pulled tighter against his skin, like it knew what was coming.

Something was off. An unnatural absence embedded in the air.

No. This wasn’t just absence, it was retreat. Like the forest itself had stepped back, making room for something worse.

The kind of quiet that came before a strike.

Remmick slowed.

This patch of forest was wrong. Too clean. Moss untouched, soil undisturbed, not even the stink of rot or honeysuckle in the air. But something sharp and bitter, like the aftertaste of a warning.

He sniffed the air. There. Under the pine. The faintest catch of ash, sliver, and sharply scented water.

His lip curled.

Garlic.

They’d laid a perimeter. Hours ago at most. And he’d walk straight into it.

Remmick took one more step, deliberately, letting the leaves and pine cones crack loudly under his boots. Letting the forest know he was there.

Let whoever was waiting know they got him. He wasn’t scared, just done hiding.

Another step, then two.

Then a snap.

The pull of a rawhide lasso around his ankle. A sharp tug, and he was on the ground.

Before he could lunge, three shapes came from the trees. One struck his temple and mouth with a staff, Another splashed something sharp across his face.

Garlic water.

He hissed, spine jerking, eyes squinted in annoyance. Then the cold kiss of a silver blade to his throat.

They’d set the trap with precision and patience. When his mind was away and his heart searching. 

He felt the presence of four more behind him. Seven of them total. Choctaw from the look and feel of them. Standing and watching with caution, readiness, and the kind of tension passed down through blood.

He’d crossed paths with men like this before.

Not these exact ones. They were too fresh, too newly blooded. But their past kin, maybe. A scouting band in what used to be Indian Territory. Different names. Same eyes.

That group had caught scent of what he was long before anyone else did. 

Two decades back, maybe more. It blurred. But back then, he’d been hunting for a thread. 

A powerful voice, a presence threaded with spirit. 

A firekeeper.  

The kind of soul who could walk the veil, and call things back. He hadn’t known her name yet, or what realm she resided in, but some part of him believed if he found one of them, he could find his way back to her.

But instead of finding the firekeeper, he’d found them. Choctaw scouts waiting like the land had whispered he was coming. They didn’t speak. Just moved with the kind of silence that meant aim had already been taken.

He’d barely made it out.

Now, decades later, it seemed like new blades, or guns, had risen and taken the call.

This group was too precise to be guessing. They’d already lost someone. That much he could tell.

Remmick snarled and tried to rise. They didn’t let him, and tied his arms back with leather soaked in garlic water and looped his legs at the knees. They drove him down every time he jerked in their grasp.

Still, he knew to play it cool. Even now, reeking of garlic, eyes and face stinging.

“Now, hold on—” he said, voice rasped and Southern-smooth, like he was explaining a card trick. “This a misunderstandin’. I was runnin’ from the thing you’re lookin’ for. Hell, I thought ya’ll were it!”

No one answered. One of the men, stout, older, with a grief-worn edge behind his squint, stepped closer. Gaze cold. 

“Ya’ think we stupid?” He spat on the ground beside Remmick. “You think we don’t know what you did? You took my boy.”

Remmick continued his shocked and frightened appearance. Once he realized his ruse wasn’t going to catch, his face dropped all pretense.

He let out a low, charmed little laugh, even as blood slipped down the side of his face.

“Well. Was worth a shot.” He tilted his head, “You’ll have to be more specific. Who we talkin’ about here?”

The older man’s jaw flexed, grief pulsing beneath the anger as he moved forward menacingly. A slightly younger man, with a stoic exterior, stepped up beside him. Silent and steady, his hand rested on his shoulder like a warning.

They finished tying him then, with no rush or flare of emotion.

One of them pressed a knee into his spine, with more force than needed. Another checked the bindings.

“He don’t look like nothin’ dead,” a quieter man muttered. “No rot or age.”

Another circled, “Eyes glint like emberlight. That shine don’t lie,” he said under his breath. 

Remmick held still, but his mind didn’t. His eyes tracked every detail. Wonky knots on his bindings, wrist angles to pull from, and the trembling fingers that tied them. One man blinked too slow. Another favored his left foot versus his right. Their grief made them sloppy. Their newness gave way to opportunity.

There was always a thread to pull. And if he watched long enough, someone always fucked up. They thought they had him apprehended, but Remmick had escaped tighter binds than these.

The voices rose once the restraints were secure. Some called for a stake. Others said: wait, not here, not yet.

“We end him with purpose. Not panic,” one said, trying to calm the riled group.

The older stout man’s voice snapped sharp with grief. “He took my son. You wanna wait for a sermon first, Arthur?”

Then came a third.

Calm. Controlled. “He dies. But not like this. If we strike, we strike clean. Not while he’s still smirkin’.”

It was a line drawn by a man not out of mercy, but control. 

But that one.

Remmick turned toward the voice, and stilled.

The others missed the shift in Remmick’s breath. But he didn’t. His jaw ticked, clenched tight.

Remmick stared, slow and deliberate.

“You… ”

The speaker stood furthest from him, but closest in presence. Still as a statue. Not the biggest, not the loudest. But the way the others settled at his words said enough.

“You smell like her,” Remmick said, voice low now. Less taunt. More awe. More confusion.

That got their attention. A few of the men turned to look.

But Remmick’s eyes didn’t leave the one.

Shoulder-length hair tucked behind the ears. Vest threaded with red and bone-colored beadwork. A shadow over his face, but his eyes didn’t need light to cut. There was power in his quiet.

“Not in the face,” Remmick murmured. “Yeah… not quite. But same stance. Same bones. Same blood. Fire that doesn’t go out.”

No one spoke. Just the thick weight of something seen but not named.

Remmick smiled, twisted and conspiratorial.

“You’re her blood,” Remmick whispered, wonder blooming. 

He laughed, blood in teeth, “Didn’t think I’d meet the father-in-law this soon.”

The others stiffened, and all turned to the man.

“Yakni, what’s he mean by that?” someone uttered, looking unsettled.

Yakni didn’t answer. Didn’t flinch, but his brow furrowed, just slightly. Like he was trying to work something out. The vampire’s words didn’t make sense, but they sparked something. Curiosity, unease, and the quiet pull of something waiting to be uncovered.

His eyes stayed on Remmick for a while longer, just studying. And then Yakni stepped forward. Not hurried, but precise. Calculated. But something in his jaw ticked, like he was holding back the urge to speak, or strike. 

He pulled a rag from his belt, paused just a breath longer than needed, then shoved it clean into Remmick’s mouth. Quick. Practiced. Fingers turned quickly to avoid the possibility of a bite.

His face stayed unreadable. But his hands shook when he stepped back.

Remmick choked once, then smiled around the gag. Triumphant.

Even bloodied, bound, and burning where the sun had touched, he looked pleased.

Because he’d found her trail again. And through her, he’d find the rest. A new hive. A new gospel. But this time, no one would burn it down.

Chapter Text

     THE sun was slipping low. The hour where gold became rust, and rust became a threat to the men.

The vampire walked ahead of them, wrists bound tight in rope gripped by Willard. His skin burned. A ripped wife beater hung loose at the collar, torn down to mid-chest, stained with blood and filth. The fabric clung in places, worn through in others. His trousers were dark with dirt, a tear splitting one knee. Bruises bloomed along his jaw and cheek. Hair matted. Mouth dry.

He looked like a man dragging death behind him.

Yakni watched the rope dig into the vampire’s wrists. Arthur’s knot. Double wrapped. It held, but in his opinion, not enough.

Only two of the Choctaw men, Alton and Jon, had moved ahead to ready the holding site. The rest flanked around and behind, rifles slung, footsteps quiet. They didn’t speak. Only the occasional crunch of a branch or shifting of gear cut the silence. 

They kept their distance from the vampire, out of fear, and out of caution given to things too wrong to look away from.

Yakni stayed closest. Just behind his left shoulder. Close enough to see the filth in his hair and blood dried across his burned skin and split face. Dennis’s work, after the vampire mouthed off one too many times.

He was also close enough to see the twitch at the corner of his mouth, like laughter bubbling at the surface.

He’d seen that look before. 

Not from the vampire. But from men and undead he’d crossed paths with, on backroads, in sickbeds, in shadows, who smiled just before the wrongness came loose.

The kind of grin a man wears when he already knows how it ends.

And in that crooked grin, bloodied, smug, and still sizzling where the garlic water had struck him, Yakni felt something shift in his gut.

Not rage, or dread, but something colder. Familiar in the way only grief could be.

It hit behind the ribs too, in that same dull way it had the day he vanished.

The same way it felt the day he last saw her.

She was about to turn eight. Sandal on the wrong foot and the other strapped too tight, with long braids messy and undone. 

He remembered how she sat at the kitchen table that morning, legs swinging, spoon clicking against a ceramic bowl. A curl stuck to her cheek from sleep. She looked up when he passed, asked if he'd be back in time for supper.

He said, “Course,” like always.

Yakni had packed his lunch tin and work gloves. He’d been part of a rez maintenance team assigned to clear debris along the edge of the forest trails. There’d been an overgrowth near the waterline that needed clearing. Routine stuff.

Andrea was in the back room. There was laundry to hang, and errands to run around town, but she had managed to kiss him goodbye before he left. 

“Don’t be late for supper,” Hushi called after him on his way out.

He flashed a grin. “Wouldn’t dare, ma.”

Mitena found her way on the porch after breakfast. He found her sitting on the wooden flooring, dragging a stick through the dust. She didn’t look up.

He stepped off the porch while slipping on his boots. But he remembered the weight of her stare the last time he left without a goodbye, and turned back to ruffle her hair. “Don’t wait up, moonbeam.”

The only sound was his boots crunching gravel as he disappeared down the trail.

And that was it. 

He never came home.

It took time before Yakni understood what had really happened that day.

He’d been working late, with trees to survey, erosion to note, and the occasional marker to reset. Tasks done hundreds of times before.

But that afternoon, something felt…off.

He was alone when it happened. The others had gone ahead to clock out, with Yakni lingering behind to reset a boundary post near the southern trailhead. When he stood up, he noticed it. The quiet. 

Not peaceful, not natural.

The kind that made birds vanish, the wind hold still, and insects go silent all at once.

Stillness that didn’t belong to a living forest. 

Then came the pressure. A pitch.

It started deep in his gut, rising through his body like it recognized what was happening before his mind did.

At first it was soft, not sharp. A high, almost imperceptible vibration behind his ears. The kind that makes the hairs on your arms lift. 

Then it shifted in an instant. Sharpened. An ear-splitting frequency that bent his knees and made his jaw clench. He groaned, stumbled back a step.

And the air changed.

Thicker now. Like he was moving underwater. His limbs heavy. His pulse out of rhythm.

He turned, tried to call out to his crew, anyone, but the forest swallowed the sound. No echo, or reply back, just the throb in his temples and the sense that time itself was folding wrong around him.

The stories had always said it. The old ones. The ones he whispered to Mitena on windless nights.

Some folks went missing without sound. No scream. No trace. Just taken.

Not dead, not buried. Just somewhere not here.

He remembered what he used to say to her, that Nalusa Falaya didn’t chase. Didn’t drag. Just waited. Waited until the world looked the wrong way. Until something in you loosened.

He had always said it like a warning, a bedtime tale wrapped in metaphor.

But now, something in his gut told him maybe it hadn’t been a metaphor at all.

With great effort, he righted himself to stand, and took one more step.

And the world slipped away. 

It wasn’t violent, but just a sudden give. Like the floor beneath him had turned to liquid. Like the world pulled him inward and refused to spit him back out.

Then dirt.

His knees hit the ground hard. Same trees, same air, but wrong.

The forest had changed, and looked older, more untamed.

The air pressed heavier, thicker. The scent of pine had shifted too. Less smoke, less fuel, and more earth. Damp and raw, like something untouched in a long time.

No hum of highways. No far-off engines, but instead endless woods ahead of him.

The trailhead behind him was gone.

The radio clipped on his belt, gone. 

The tags on the trees he just worked on, missing. 

The tire tracks from the morning’s truck, absent.

His chest sank.

He didn’t know how long he stayed there. Knees in the dirt, his chest tight, waiting for someone to call his name. Though, no one did.

Yakni stayed there for three nights, in denial and waiting for the crew to circle back.

No one came.

He retraced his steps, trying to follow the creek bend back toward the main road. But it became impossible to deny, the world he knew wasn’t the same.

By the fifth day, he found a road. Gravel, worn, and unfamiliar. A man in a Ford Model A passed him without stopping. As he watched it go, the plate gave him pause.

217·504

MISS · 1925

Yakni didn’t believe it at first. He thought maybe his head had gotten hit on the trail, and he was off dreaming in a hospital bed somewhere. But time kept passing. The men and women dressed wrong. Spoke differently. No one knew what he meant when he asked for a cellphone. 

And weeks bled into months.

He stopped asking questions, learned to believe the unbelievable, and the not-knowing sat heavy on his chest.

And Mitena. His moonbeam.

He didn’t know where she was. If she was.

Slowly, a bitter understanding settled in. Not full knowledge, not some sudden prophecy that hit him all at once. But a shape of cognizance that lived beneath the skin. 

Something had opened. A tear in the world. Yakni had no reasoning on how he fell through it. That day didn’t feel like the start of something. He had packed his lunch, kissed his wife, and went to work. Then, suddenly, the world changed.

He didn’t think the force that took him had intention. But maybe it didn’t care who it took.

And he kept circling back to what he carried. The stories. The names. The songs. The ones he used to whisper to his daughter. The ones most folks had already forgotten.

He hadn’t let the old stories die, and maybe that was all it needed.

A thread to follow. A voice it recognized. That kind of knowing that doesn’t live in books, only in the body.

And if it had taken him, maybe he wouldn’t be the only one.

It took nearly a year for the grief to settle into something bearable. Buried deep enough to carry him through. One day to the next, town to town.

Somehow, he always ended up near Pearl River. Though, not his version of it. 

Perhaps part of him thought that if he was close enough, the world might put itself back to what he knew.

But days folded in on themselves with one odd job and the next. He took jobs on the edge of town. He worked wherever he could, clearing brush, fixing fences, and cutting crop. He went where hands were needed and questions weren’t asked.

One day, sorting empty crates behind a grocer’s stall, a crumpled page of newspaper blew past him. It caught on his boot. He bent to pick it up, brushing dust from the headline.

July 8th, 1926

COOLIDGE REFUSES TO INTERVENE IN COAL STRIKES!

Yakni already knew the year, remembered the jolt of first piecing it together from license plates and calendars. But seeing it printed like that, anchored in history, made it land harder. Like proof of how far gone he really was.

The future he’d come from felt impossibly far.

The present he was in, undeniable. It was real, and he was still here.

Yakni eventually just accepted the rhythm. He slept in sheds, in churchyards, under awnings when it rained. Learned to keep quiet and move when eyes lingered too long. 

Then one afternoon, sorting crates behind a freight depot outside Neshoba and stacking produce for transport, something caught his eye.

Most of the crates bore nothing but stamps from local grocers, or hand-scrawled tags faded from sun and condensation.

But one caught his eye. A neat stencil, cleaner than the rest:

JJ’S GENERAL STORE — PEARL RIVER

The wood was warm from the sun, and the black stencil caught the light in a way that made it hard to look away. He didn’t know the place, but the name scraped something loose in him. 

He didn’t lift it right away, but just stood there, thumb brushing the edge of the crate.

Somewhere nearby, a cart clattered loose against the gravel. He blinked, finally, and moved it to the stack. He didn’t look at the stamped stencil again.

A few days later, he was behind the depot again, coiling rope near the fence. 

From the other side of the street, a man stepped out of a grain store, a sack slung over one shoulder. He moved steady, broad framed, rolled sleeves, and hair stuck to his neck from the heat. 

He paused near a post, adjusted his grip, then kept walking.

Yakni watched without meaning to, next to two men, who stood at the gate. They shared a smoke, and one nodded toward the road where the man walked down.

“That’s Jon Turner’s boy,” he said. “Got that same heavy walk.”

The other snorted. “Ya’ mean Arthur?”

Yakni, overhearing the conversation, tried to focus on his task. Though, something in him tightened before he knew why.

He finished tying the rope, but the name stuck with him.

It trailed him after his shift, lingered through supper, curled beside him in the bunk that night like it meant to stay.

Arthur. 

Turner.

Slowly unraveling, like a thread snagged on a nail.

The name came back the next day. Yakni was in a different town by then, moving feed near the back of a warehouse when an older man passed, rolling a splintered cart. A boy, no older than sixteen, trailed behind him.

He muttered as he walked by, voice low and tired. “Used to be both kids working the front of the shop. Boy stuck ‘round. Girl didn’t. Now we gotta pick up the slack.”

The boy asked something to the older man, but Yakni couldn’t hear. He grunted, “She married out. Went to Omaha. Whole damn family acted like she vanished after that.”

Yakni stopped listening.

Omaha.

He looked up. The cart was already crossing the street, wheels catching on gravel. It passed a light blue door with a hand-painted sign above it, faded nearly to nothing.

The older man reached for the handle, pushed the door open, and stepped inside. The boy followed. Just above them, the shop name clung on the wood.

JJ’S GENERAL STORE

Yakni kept his hands moving, but his focus was gone.

His mind twisted back to stories passed down about his father. He never met him. His mother was the only one who talked about him, and even then, not often. Though when she did, it would be whispered to him in the quiet hours.

Said he was soft-spoken. Thought too much. Walked the woods like he owned them and always liked to whistle a jaunty tune off-key. 

He died before Yakni was born, but his absence never felt like silence. 

Hushi used to say he had a knack for storytelling, always dramatic and never the same twice. Something folks told him he got from his pa.

Except for one story.

The only story he told the same every time was a thread of family history passed down. His grandmother, Sarah, a Choctaw woman from Mississippi, met an Omaha man, Samuel, near Pearl River. 

They left together for Nebraska. 

Had Jack.

Jack had Yakni. 

And the rest was history.

Her family never forgave her for leaving them and their community, for prioritizing a stranger over kin. And eventually they stopped saying her name. Shut the door like it had always been closed.

But Jack always remembered.

When Yakni was little, he used to ask about Sarah. But Hushi could only answer in fragments, and in questions of her own.

And now, standing in that warehouse, Omaha still echoing, and the JJ’s sign weathered to bone. It felt like something had found him.

The same words kept turning over in his mind. Turner. Omaha. Sarah.

Not just stories anymore. Not scattered lines on a family tree, but real, breathing people, moving through the same time he now occupied. A Tuesday like any other, but not for him.

Maybe to Arthur, or to Samuel and Sarah, it was just another day. Another delivery. Another name on a crate. Another Tuesday.

But to Yakni, it bent the world just enough to make him feel like he wasn’t drifting for no reason.

He moved through the rest of his shift like the air had thickened around him, every motion heavier than it should’ve been.

He kept thinking it would pass, that the weight in his chest would ease once the sun dipped and the crates were done.

But it didn’t.

So when the foreman called out, looking for someone to stay late, Yakni didn’t hesitate.

He didn’t know why. Only that he felt like the day wasn’t finished with him yet.

☾ *** ☾

The sun had long since dropped. What was left of it hung low in the sky like an afterthought, casting long shadows across the warehouse yard. 

Most of the crew had cleared out. Just Yakni and one other, a lanky man named Harold, stayed behind to finish the run.

They didn’t talk much. Just loaded the last crates onto the dolly, and moved them toward the back for morning pickup. It was silent and effective work.

The light above the back entrance buzzed and flickered, too dim to be useful. Yakni dragged the last crate toward the loading platform, boots crunching over gravel. A warm breeze kicked up dust, then settled again.

Harold had gone off to check the side gate. Said something about a latch that wouldn’t catch. That was ten minutes ago.

He figured Harold was smoking. Or stalling. Some of the men stretched small tasks into twenty-minute breaks.

Though Yakni glanced toward the far corner of the yard, and…nothing.

Just the sag of the chain-link fence and a row of stacked pallets.

He wiped sweat from his brow, but that’s when he heard it.

Subtle, at first. Easy to miss. Like someone breathing through their teeth.

He paused, and listened even carefully. 

A wet click followed, very close by.

Not metal, nor boots. It was too soft. Too wet. The wrong kind of sound for a place full of crates and men.

Yakni set the crate he was holding down slowly, quietly.

“Harold?” he called.

No answer. Just the scrape of something dragging. Something heavy, but wrong in rhythm.

Then a sound like slurping, or swallowing.

Yakni’s stomach turned. He stepped toward the corner of the room, shoulders stiff, pulse loud in his ears.

By this time, the moon hadn’t fully risen, still low behind the trees. But a yard lamp flickered above the space, old, buzzing, and jaundiced with dust. It threw a weak cone of yellow light across the fence line, just enough to catch a figure hunched in the dark.

“Hey!” Yakni called again, sharper this time. “That you?”

The figure stilled.

For one stretched second, there was no sound at all.

Then it turned without rising.

The movement was smooth, too smooth, and unnatural on a human. No shifting of weight, no bend of knees. Just a neck that craned too far and eyes that caught the light like glass. An inhumane shade of white.

Yakni froze.

The thing was crouched over something, or someone. A hand, limp and dark with blood, was curled near its feet. Harold’s cap lay nearby, soaked through with some sort of liquid.

The creature tilted its head. Not a man, or any trace of humanity left in the body it wore.

Its mouth glistened, red all over the bottom half of its face. Teeth long. Jaw unhurried. It looked at Yakni like it didn’t know what to make of him.

Prey or bothersome presence.

Then it smiled. Not wide, but enough to show it could.

In response, Yakni took a step back, but didn’t run. He knew he probably wouldn’t be able to outrun it. 

Then, the thing blinked slowly. And without a twitch or rustle, it was gone in a blink of an eye.

Only the sounds of a distant dog barking, the buzz of the lamp, and the sickly wetness still staining the gravel were left.

Yakni stood alone with his hands trembling, and Harold not too far off.

But Harold didn’t move. Not even a breath. His chest stayed still, eyes wide open, staring at nothing.

He took a tentative step forward. Just one. But the smell hit first, sharp, copper-thick, and soured at the edges. Blood left out too long.

His stomach pitched. He turned away and braced himself on the crate stack, willing the bile back down.

When he looked again, it was only to confirm what he already knew. Harold was gone. Not just dead, but looking like all blood was emptied from his body.

Like the thing had taken more than blood. Like it had drained life itself, and scooped it out from the soul.

Yakni backed away slowly, and didn’t touch the body. Later when he was alone, he would call himself a coward for not checking Harold’s pulse or making sure there was still some life left in him.

But in the moment, the silence felt heavy. Complicit. Like something had settled over Harold, and wasn’t done yet.

Yakni felt like he sat there for a long while, but then he immediately stood and left the building. With a sense of hurry and a newfound purpose.

He didn’t go back to his bunk.

Just walked into the worker’s residence, grabbed his few possessions, and stuffed them into a knapsack, along with what little cash he’d tucked away.

Then he stepped back into the dark.

North. Toward the Turner house.

Maybe it was foolish, or maybe it was instinct.

But the words he’d heard in passing days, Turner, Omaha, Sarah, weren’t just coincidence anymore.

Something had pulled him here. And something wanted him to see the truth buried beneath it all.

And now, he understood. The names weren’t just echoes anymore, they were a trail. One he was meant to follow.

His legs hadn’t stopped moving since leaving Harold. Mud clung thick to his boots. Dried blood crusted his cuff. He didn’t wipe it off.

By the time he reached the Turner property, it was still night. Crickets still hummed. Porch lamps still burned.

He stood across the road for a long while, watching, and realizing he had no idea what he’d come to say.

The house was plain, quiet. Smoke from the chimney thinning into sky. 

He stepped through the gate cautiously, and then stepped up to the porch, like each board might snap beneath him. He paused at the door, and raised his hand once, let it fall, then raised it again.

He knocked twice.

A long silence passed.

Rushed footsteps sounded inside. A creak. The door opened partway, and a woman stepped from the glow of the fire inside, robe tied tight but unable to hide her pregnancy bump, and one braid slipping loose from sleep.

She looked somewhere in her early thirties. The kind of woman who’d seen too much to soften her voice for strangers.

She didn’t speak. Just looked at him with eyes that didn’t flinch. Then, “Need somethin’?”

Yakni shifted on his feet. “Sorry to bother so late. Just…heard the name Turner ‘round town. Wasn’t sure if I had the right place.”

Her brows pinched, but before she could answer, a deeper voice cut through from inside.

“Alice? You alright?” A man stepped up behind her, broad and alert despite the hour. He was pulling on a shirt as he stepped forward, gaze flicking to Yakni. “What is it? It’s late.”

Arthur.

“I’m fine,” Alice murmured. But the man gave her a look that sent her back inside.

The man held the door steady, and didn't speak.

Yakni scratched the back of his neck. “I’m new to the area.” he said, but didn’t quite meet the man’s eyes. “Lookin’ for someone. Arthur Turner. Got pointed this way.”

His posture stiffened. “Who’s askin’?” The light flickered behind Arthur’s shoulder, casting his face in half-shadow. He could see the man was sizing him up for any sign of danger.

Yakni shifted, then gave a quiet exhale. “Shit. Never mind,” he muttered, half to himself. “Sorry to bother you.” He stepped back, already turning from the porch.

Arthur’s gaze lingered, a careful look trained upon Yakni’s retreating form. “There’s other Turners in Pearl River,” he called out. “Most of ‘em don’t get visitors after dark.” His tone was plain, as if stating the weather.

Yakni paused, turning back to face Arthur.

Arthur’s gaze moved over him. Mud-slick boots, a shirt marked with stains hard to see in the dark, and a worn knapsack hanging off one shoulder.

A man who looked worn down, tired, and as if he had nothing left to lose.

He stepped forward, just enough to block more of the doorway. “Ya’ lost?” Arthur asked, voice flat. “Don’t think I’ve seen you before. You askin’ for work at the store?”

Yakni’s thumb brushed the strap of his bag. “I’m not lookin’ for work,” he said. “Name came up a few times. Figured I’d ask, then be on my way.”

Arthur's eyes narrowed, posture stiffening. “That don’t mean much.”

“No. It don’t.” Yakni replied simply.

“You always go knockin’ on doors this late over a name?” He said back.

“Not usually,” Yakni uttered.

Arthur exhaled hard through his nose. Less patient this time. “The hell you want?” Irritation flashing through. “If you ain’t here for work, and you won’t say what you’re lookin’ for, then get off my porch.”

Yakni’s jaw tightened. He didn’t blame the man, his own head was spinning from all the half-truths. He considered leaving it alone. Letting the silence carry him off the porch. There wasn’t a reason to ask. Not one he could name.

But the question kept circling. So finally, he asked it.

“You got family out west?”

Arthur squinted, and didn't answer at first. “Why you askin’?”

“Omaha came up. Wasn’t sure if it meant anything to you.”

Arthur studied him, the porch light catching one side of his face. “You got a last name?”

“Lewis.”

Arthur’s brow lifted, his mouth tightening. “Lewis,” he said flatly. “Been some time since that name passed through here.”

“Yeah,” Yakni said, not sure what else to offer.

A quiet passed as wind moved through the trees. Arthur shifted his weight, his tone changed.

“That’s a lotta things to recall about strangers for someone just settin’ foot in town.”

Yakni shrugged. “Guess I just got a habit of listenin’.”

Arthur stared at him a beat longer than needed. Like he was trying to will him away with a look, or maybe just tired of the back-and-forth.

Then, with a tight breath, Arthur uttered, “You said Omaha?” 

Yakni stilled.

“My sister married out that way,” Arthur went on. “Ain’t heard from her in a few.”

Yakni gave a slow nod, like that was all he needed. A thread pulled tight. Confirmed.

“Didn’t mean to bring up something you’d rather leave alone,” Yakni said, voice low. “Wasn’t tryin’ to stir that up.”

Arthur crossed his arms. “What’s that mean?”

Yakni met his eyes. His jaw worked once, like the truth was close, but he let it pass. Then he exhaled, sharp and short.

“Forget it,” he muttered. “Ain’t my place.” He stepped back, but then stopped.

“Jus’…” he hesitated. “…If something don’t stay in the ground the way it should, just remember I came by. Might not make sense now, but if things start goin’ wrong, real wrong, you think back on this. And you find me. I’ll be ‘round.”

Arthur stepped forward, voice low. “What exactly are you talkin’ about?”

But Yakni was already backing away, with the warning left behind.

“Take care,” he muttered. Then turned and walked off the porch, into the dark.

Arthur stayed where he was, one hand still on the doorframe, watching the road and frowning. He could still feel the echo of what hadn’t been spoken.

Yakni kept walking until the road bled into trees again. Found a dry patch near a hollow, tucked beneath pine, and sat there until morning was close. He didn’t sleep, but more importantly, he couldn’t.

The man on that porch wasn’t just a name anymore. He was blood of blood. And that changed things.

He’d thought, once, about heading north. Finding the house Samuel built. The town Sarah settled in. But in the end, he’d stayed put.

Some roots you don’t dig up, not because you’re scared of the past, but because you respect it. And some things, even the ones you miss most, you leave where they are.

He didn’t speak of what else he’d lost. A loving wife. A sweet daughter. A mother who’d mourn her son. 

What good would it do? They were in another world now. And he was in this one.

After that night, there was no more drifting. No more odd jobs just to fill the time.

Yakni dedicated himself to what he now understood: the stories weren’t stories. And the monsters weren’t myths.

He kept low, asked questions when it felt safe to ask, pieced together the names whispered too cautiously to be made up. Towns that had gone quiet. Men who never came home. Families who couldn’t bury what didn’t stay dead.

He was learning. Listening. Preparing.

Not long after, he met a man named Willard. Older, hefty, sharp-eyed and knowledgeable. The kind who noticed things others missed. 

Yakni asked with care, never more than needed. Willard passed along what little he’d pieced together, like a man who’d stayed on the edge of something bigger. Their talk wasn’t long, but it was useful. A passing moment where someone answered without flinching.

Then Yakni moved on.

West, into rougher places. Where deaths like Harold’s weren’t dismissed. Where folks kept close to the fire in groups and spoke of the dead plain, not in fear, but in warning.

But now, there was something worth guarding. A reason this time wasn’t wasted. A sense of purpose.

☾***☾

They crossed the clearing slowly.

The vampire walked ahead, suspenders limp at his sides, wrists still lashed. The sun gnawed at what little strength he had left. Still, he didn’t falter. Instead, he moved like he was leading them.

Yakni stayed close.

He hadn’t said much since the accusation in the trees. No one had.

You’re her blood.

The others avoided his eyes, but their glances lingered a little too long.

No one asked what the vampire meant.

And truthfully, none of them wanted to know. It was easier to pretend it was just poison being whispered from the vampire’s mouth than to question one of their own.

They cleared the edge of the trees and stepped into the wide open patch the others had readied ahead of time. A faint line of salt caught his eye, along with glints of rusted nails pressed into the soil. A charm bag hung from a branch nearby, limp in the still air.

The vampire looked around slowly, and took it all in. Then he looked at them, and huffed out a laugh.

“Well now,” he drawled, voice dry. “Salt, iron, and a little prayer bag. Y’all are superstitious.”

“Not our kind of warding,” Yakni said flatly. “But it’ll do if it holds.”

The vampire took a step, slow and theatrical. Willard jerked the rope, and it stayed tight in his grip, Arthur’s knot holding. “Don’t test it, Impa Shilup.”

The creature didn’t flinch. Just smiled, a ragged edge to it. He turned, slowly, to face them, his skin peeling in places, and dark with blood and dirt. Still, he stood with grace. Chin high. Amused.

“What I always wonder—,” he said, voice light, “Is why no one ever asks me why I came here.” He mumbled, as if to himself.

“Not a single one of ya’ said, ‘whatcha want ?’” No one moved, but were tense and cautious as if listening to the ramblings of a mad man.

“Fair enough,” he said after a beat, smiling faintly. “Ya’ wouldn’t believe me anyhow.”

And then he struck.

Faster than any of them could rationalize. The rope snapped taut, and Willard cursed as the rope burned through his grip. 

A sharp gust knocked Arthur sideways. Jon yelled something no one caught. The charm bag burst from its string, fluttering like dead leaves and falling softly to the ground.

Yakni reached for his stake, heart slamming against his chest. Words escaped him.

Because the vampire wasn’t running.

He was rising.

Straight up, with no wings in sight, but dirt blown back down and horror left in its wake. 

By the time the rifles were lifted, he was already gone. A blur across the trees, smoke trailing faintly behind.

All that remained was the torn rope, the broken ring of salt, and the scrambling Choctaw warriors, now quiet, now still, grappling with the truth of what had just risen. Not a trickster, not a fledgling, but something older. Something far more powerful than they had prepared for.

Chapter Text

     THE shed behind Annie’s house stood empty now. Door ajar, broom propped neatly beside the frame. No light burned inside it anymore. No bowls of food left outside its rotted door.

Some thresholds don’t creak when you cross them. You just wake up one morning and realize you’ve been let in.

Annie never officially invited her to stay, but she didn’t have to. Mitena had moved into the back corner of the shop since the day they tended to Ida.

But every morning, she rose before the roosters. Poured water into the tin kettle, gathered herbs from the kitchen shelf, and stepped out into a world that had stopped questioning her presence.

The townsfolk had grown used to her. Not just out of need, but out of trust.

They didn’t flinch at her anymore, not at the way she looked too Choctaw to place, or not Black enough. Or the way her presence felt older than her physical years.

They didn’t bristle in the way her fingers paused before touching someone, or how she asked sharp, clinical questions before they even sat down, like a woman trained to do so.

Didn’t flinch when she cleaned under nails before checking a rash, or timed a pulse by watching the breath.

And they came. Steady now. First one, then another. Not always in pain, but always in need.

A boy too young to be working the cotton rows, but his hands already told the story. Cracked knuckles, black soil ground deep under his nails, and fever behind the eyes. She gave him mullein steeped with honey, wrapped a flannel around his chest, and sent him on his way with instructions to rest.

A chatty older woman with a bad hip and no kin left to rub the ache away. Mitena used rosemary oil warmed on the stove, told her to come back in a few days. Or sooner, if she just wanted a cup of tea and someone to talk to.

A field hand with a cracked walking stick. She helped mend it, smoothing the wood and wrapping the base tight. Then handed it back with a smile. “It’s not a cure, Mr. Eugene. But it’ll hold ‘til I see you again.”

Like Annie, she accepted that payment didn’t always come in coin. More often than not, it was scrip.

Sometimes it was a faded ribbon. Or a pair of socks stitched too small for someone else, but perfect for her. Even a jar of pickled okra with a note: For Steady Hands.

Things with weight and use.

And for the first time since she’d been pulled here, Mitena felt like she wasn’t just surviving anymore. She was becoming.

She spoke more now. Not much, but the weight had shifted in her voice. Less careful, and more dry wit. The kind that slid under your skin if you weren’t listening close. A sharpness softened only by warmth.

She teased the boy who kept faking a stomach ache to sneak molasses. Let a baby grip her braid while she stirred salve one-handed. Told a flirtatious farmhand with a crooked smile, “You ain’t sick. You’re bored. Go help your mama.”

The man laughed, then brought her a pie the next day anyway. She accepted it with a nod, and no invitation inside was offered. The pie was delicious though.

It felt like the closest thing to peace since back home.

She felt like the person she used to be.

A woman with a sharp tongue and a soft touch. Who laughed with her mouth full and cursed when the kettle screamed. Who stayed up too late fixing things that weren’t hers to fix, and never liked being told to rest. Who knew how to care for others long before she knew how to care for herself.

Black and Choctaw. Memory-keeper. Death-touched. Woman. Her identity wasn’t explained. It was lived. Felt in her hands, her voice, and the work she did.

She didn’t say it out aloud, but it pulsed under the skin. This quiet kind of belonging. Not earned through blood, or lineage, or some paper-bound name. But shown, over time. Steeped into daily acts until it stuck.

And Annie saw it.

In how she stopped hovering. Stopped glancing over Mitena’s shoulder when handing off a task. In how she passed her the balm jar without a word. And how she let her be the one to answer the door first.

The rhythm between them had shifted, too. Fewer silences shaped by suspicion. More by ease.

Glances traded without question. Tasks picked up without asking who started them. And the weight of another body in the room that didn’t press or pull.

They didn’t speak of what came before, not often. But their hands worked like women who’d labored side-by-side for years.

And Mitena, without naming it, had started to breathe differently. She moved through the house like someone not just welcome, but rooted. Her hands no longer hesitated when she reached for an item not hers. Her shoulders didn’t brace at a knock on the door. She had space now. Not just to work, but to be.

Whatever haunted her didn’t vanish. But it no longer led. It followed, quieter. Easier to bear when shared.

She still dreamed of him. The mystery man. Still heard his voice in sleep. But the dreams didn’t send her gasping awake anymore. Just left a tight ache in her ribs. A sense of something unfinished.

And lately, when she dreamed of her time in Pearl River, of the woods—She couldn’t unhear it anymore.

That voice from the dark.

It hadn’t been a stranger’s. Not really.

She remembered how it curled from the trees like smoke. Low. Lilting. Seductive. Not just Southern, but ancient. Like it had shown her other voices before choosing the one that would break past her guard.

She remembered how he said her name after she gave it. As if it already belonged to him.

Back then, she told herself it was just a trick of the mind. A leftover dream bleeding into real thought.

But now, Mitena knew better.

It was his voice.

The same one from her dreams, that reached her night after night. That came with music, and blood, and memory not her own.

She didn’t know why she hadn’t recognized it sooner. Maybe because she hadn’t wanted to. Because naming it meant admitting he’d found her long before she found him. That he claimed her long before she even saw his eyes.

And the worst part wasn’t the terror. It was that she was waiting for him.

Something in her had already gravitated toward him. Slow, massive, and undeniable.

Maybe that’s why Annie started watching her a little closer. With quiet caution. 

She saw the mornings Mitena woke too still. Eyes fogged like she’d lived someone else’s life all night.

And the next time she woke breathless, certain something had watched her in her dreams, Annie handed her a jar of black salt, and she gently closed Mitena’s fingers around it.

“Keep it on ya’,” Annie said. “Under the tongue. When the air go still…When somethin’ feel like it tryin’ to slip through.” 

She continued, voice sure. “That’s when you use it. For company that don’t knock first.”

So Mitena did. The salt was sharp, sulfuric, strange, like burnt eggs and earth. It made her gag the first time. But by the third use, it steadied her. 

But it didn’t stop the dreams. Nothing did.

Although, it did anchor her death-sense when it surged too fast. When someone knocked with death on them. When her memory-keeper blood stirred suddenly, dragging the past through her like splinters.

They still hit hard. Still left her winded at times. But with Annie nearby, and the salt sharp beneath her tongue, she didn’t spiral.

Annie always said control didn’t mean silence. It was the strength to hold it without sinking.

Maybe that’s why she finally spoke. Because the quiet didn’t claw anymore. And steadiness, when shared, felt like shelter.

She followed the quiet tug to understand, to name what had been circling her, into the space where Annie laid the bones.

That evening, as the light thinned and the air cooled, Annie had already placed the cloth across the table. It was old, hand-dyed, and the kind passed down rather than bought. 

Her back was to Mitena, shoulders still. A candle burned low on the table. No incense. No chants. Just flame, flickering like it knew something was coming.

Annie didn’t turn. Didn’t speak.

Mitena had to begin, and she did.

It wasn’t a clean retelling. It bled. Out of order, and out of her.

She spoke of Pearl River. The blood. Of Peter, the kindness of him, and how fast it was taken away from this world. 

Of Arthur’s blank gaze. Of Alice’ silence, and how it felt like betrayal. 

And then, breath by breath, she gave more, empowered.

About the night the town split open, not just from grief, but from something hungrier.

She spoke of the screams that turned animal. The Klan torches and their march, blurred by the speed of something unnatural. Of the man who tried to kill her, to do worse, and the blur of red hair that tore him apart.

She circled back, her thoughts not linear, and told Annie about the dreams. How they started before Peter died. How they haven’t stopped. Of the man haunting her nights and scrambling truth from imagination.

There was more she could’ve said. About the way time cracked open. About waking up in a year that didn’t belong to her. But even now, the words snagged in her throat. 

It felt too big, too much, for this moment. A thought confirmed by Annie’s tensed shoulders, and rigid back. 

So she ended simply, “I think I talked to him in the woods that night. The one from my dreams. Before the others started dying.”

Her fingers shook in her lap. “Same voice. Same feeling.”

And after all that, Annie didn’t speak. But her hands moved.

The small bones, buttons, and tiny knick knacks were poured slow, soft clicking of old things meeting cloth. One rolled off the edge. Neither of them picked it up.

Annie watched the scatter without speaking, a long pause along with a furrow of her brows. She tilted her head slightly, like listening to something behind the hush. Then Annie murmured, voice low, “Some spirits don’t want rest. They want what was promised to ‘em.”

Another beat. The flame dipped. The room felt smaller.

Mitena didn’t move. “Promised?” she whispered, tensed.

Annie’s eyes stayed on the bones. Her hand hovered near one that landed sideways. She didn’t touch it, just frowned.

“This ain’t clear,” she muttered to herself. “Somethin’s knotted in the reading. Like a thread pulled wrong. Tampered with.”

Her eyes moved to Mitena, studying her like a puzzle that had a couple of pieces missing. “You ever make a deal you don’t remember makin’?”

Mitena shook her head, her throat was dry.

“Feels like somethin’ opened a gate for you.”

She leaned back, voice uneasy. “Somethin’s been twisted,” she said finally. Her eyes didn’t leave the bones. “The kind of reach don’t come without cost.”

Then, softer, as if caught in a trance and the words were moving through her, not from her, Annie whispered, “It will take its toll from her. ”

A beat. Then she blinked, as if shaking something off, and glanced over her shoulder with a flicker of concern. Her voice steadied.

“From you. From your kin. The balance is owed. Somethin’ was taken. And duty’s the one left to give.”

☾***☾

The early afternoon light settled slow and drowsy, catching on laundry lines and clinging to porch rails as Mitena moved through the narrow back fields near the edge of town. 

Her worn work bag hung in her hand. She’d been sent to check on a fever, the preacher’s youngest, too weak to eat or stir much at all.

The house sat low to the earth, its frame leaning a little too far off to the left, patched with tin and the kind of wear that came from long warm seasons and little rest. It looked the same as the other homes that surrounded it, yet the kind of place that whispered old histories through the floorboards when you stepped too hard. 

A sharecropper’s home. Or something older than that.

Smoke drifted from a crooked chimney, and the scent of cornbread curled out the cracks of the home. Someone was humming low inside, like a woman keeping rhythm with her chores.

Mitena moved up the raised porch and hesitated at the open door. Ruthie, preacher Jedediah’s wife, didn’t look up, too busy mashing something within a metal pot with a wooden spoon. 

At the sound of Mitena clearing her throat, Ruthie looked up quickly.

She offered a soft and tired smile, “Bless you for comin’, I know you busy nowadays,” she said,  wiping her hands on her apron, coming to meet Mitena at the entrance. “She feelin’ real warm today.”

The house was full but calm. One boy napped, curled on a cot near the kitchen table. Another sat cross-legged by the low fire, snapping dried beans into a bowl. A third, a girl, sat perched on a stool, watching Mitena with wide, curious eyes. 

“What do we say to guests?” Ruthie called gently to the children. A small chorus followed: Afternoon, Miss Lewis.

Mitena smiled gently, and murmured her greeting in return.

On the far side of the room, near the back door, the youngest lay curled on a pallet of sheets and quilts. Fever-flushed, she barely stirred, her small arms limp at her sides.

Mitena nodded toward her gently. “May I?” she asked.

Ruthie gave a small nod and smile in reply. 

Mitena eased to her knees beside the girl once she reached her. Her breath was shallow, brow warm, skin touched with a fading pallor. 

She softly brushed the tight curls from the girl’s temple, then pulled a small thermometer from her bag, and gave it a quick shake. Mitena tucked it gently beneath the child’s arm, into the warm fold where the shoulder met side.

While it settled, she found the girl’s wrist and counted the pulse under her breath. It was steady and even. No signs of strain in her breathing. And the color in her lips looked as if in the process of returning.

She gave a short nod to herself and reached for a folded damp cloth nearby, dabbing the girl’s forehead. 

The thermometer gleamed low and still as she waited. When the minute passed, she slid it out and squinted at the reading in the slanted light.

“Hundred and one,” she said plainly. “High, but not dangerous. Looks like she’s already comin’ down.” She moved the thermometer back into her bag and reached for the cloth again, making sure to gently dab at her brow. Mitena’s eyes lingered a moment, her expression softening at the child’s face, slack but gentle from sleep.

“Keep her cool,” Mitena added. “No heavy quilts. Just a light cover and let her rest. Seems like she’s past the worst of it now.”

Ruthie had stepped near, twisting her apron in her hands. “She ain’t eaten much. Jus’ picked at some broth yesterday.”

“She’s just worn out, is all. The fever’s working its way out on its own. But she’ll be alright. She jus’ need rest and time.”

Mitena reached into her bag once more, and pulled out a small mason jar, wrapped in cloth to keep it warm. She turned to Ruthie, and passed her the jar. “Brought this in case. Mullein and peppermint, stepped fresh this morning.”

Ruthie took it with both hands. The smell wafting between them, herbaceous, clean, and slightly sweet.

“Just a few sips when she stirs,” Mitena instructed. “No heavy meals, no grease. Broth if she feelin’ up to it.”

Ruthie nodded, her shoulders easing. “Lord, I appreciate you. I was worried about my baby girl,” she said softly. “Feel like I can breathe easy now.”

Mitena gave a short nod and a big smile, already packing up her bag. “She’ll be right as rain, you’ll see. Jus’ keep her cool, and let her rest. I’ll check in a couple days from now.”

Ruthie nodded again, and reached into her apron pocket. She pulled out a folded scrap of paper, a bit of plantation scrip, and offered it eagerly to Mitena.

“For the visit,” she said. “Ain’t much, but—”

Mitena shook her head gently. “Don’t need it. Was a simple call.”

Ruthie hesitated, but tucked the scrip away. Instead, she turned to a covered bowl near the fireplace. She pulled the warm cloth away and lifted a small parcel wrapped in waxed paper. The smell hit immediately, cornbread, still warm and soft from the fireplace. 

“Take this, then,” she said, tucking it into Mitena’s hands. “Ain’t right sendin’ you off with nothin’. Besides, I’ve been told my cornbread could win ribbons all across the Delta.”

Mitena blinked, the warmth seeping into her fingers. She didn’t argue, and smiled brightly. “Then, I’ll make sure to enjoy every single bite!”

After a few parting words with Ruthie and the children, Mitena stepped back into the thick gold of mid-afternoon. The breeze caught the hem of her green wrap dress, tugging it gently, her curls shifting loose around her shoulders.

She made it three paces down the path before a sound, faint but rich, reached her ears from around the side of the house. Mitena followed the sound, steps light and drawn to the noise.

And there he was.

A man, closer to a boy in some respect, leaning against the side wall, one foot propped on the plank beneath him, overalls worn soft from work and use. 

His sleeves were rolled, boots scuffed and caked in dirt. A guitar strap crossed his shoulder, the resonator’s body scraped in places, catching the sun like a sudden flash of warning.

His thumb grazed a few of the strings, not performing but going through the motions as if he was. Then, eyes closed, a few words slipped out between breaths.

I love ya, Papa…you did all you could do .

A few silent beats passed, he plucked a few strings without hurry. The air folded around it, as if on edge for the next words. 

They say the truth hurts, so I lied to you. Yes, I lied to you.

His voice lingered in the stillness that followed, as if he were plotting in real time how to proceed. Then—

Mm-mmm…

He leaned into the sound, no longer words but resonance and harmonization. His thumb grazed a deeper cord. The notes continued to hold, and it seemed that even the cicadas went quiet, the wind stilled, and then something in the air bent.

Mitena didn’t move. Her bag had slipped to the ground beside her. She stayed still, half-hidden by the side of the house, while his voice rolled steady through the air.

His voice wasn’t polished, but it was smooth and carried weight, like aged in oak and to perfection. A voice made for the blues. It filled the air like smoke, and left no room to breathe easy.

Mitena didn’t think she could’ve moved, even if she wanted to. But the sound wrapped around her body like chains, and held fast. Not harshly, but surely. As if there was no choice in the matter. 

His harmonizing swelled again, rolled into the air, and something moved with them. The air had a tilt to it now, the land itself felt as if it was leaning in to listen. As if time had stuttered and skipped a beat. 

And in the cleared grassy area, not too far from the house and them, the space shimmered. The light slanted wrong, no longer a dull shine but even more golden. 

The insects held back, their hums pulled inward and muted. 

The air thickened, heavy, as if it had to push through molasses just to move. 

The outline of objects, fence posts, a leaning shed, and trees, blurred faintly.

And in the center of that shift, the ground seemed to breathe, a pulse below the topsoil. As if a presence had been exhaled from beneath the dirt, waiting.

Then a chair. No, a familiar rocking chair, as if magically summoned.

Then a woman, a shawl draped over her shoulders, bare feet planted in the ground. Eyes crinkled with a smile soft enough to knock the breath clean out of her. 

Mitena’s legs nearly gave out. Not from fright, but from the ache of knowing who it was.

Her Nana. 

Hushi.

Whole, and looking well. Sitting just as she had before her passing, before her funeral. Before Mitena’s turbulent arrival in the past. 

Mitena didn’t dare blink.

The chair rocked slow beneath Hushi. That back-and-forth rhythm Mitena used to fall asleep to as a child.

The same fingers that once held Mitena’s hair while brushing it out in long, slow strokes.

The same hands that smelled of cedar and rosewater when she cupped Mitena’s face to say, “You might walk the whole wide world, but you carry me the same. My love don’t go nowhere, child. ”

But Hushi didn’t have to speak now. It was her smile that did it for Mitena. 

The way her eyes didn’t just look at Mitena, but remembered her. Not just the girl she used to be, or the woman she was, but the woman she was becoming. Like she saw the whole thread, grief and all, and was proud of her. 

That kind of real seeing, something she hadn’t experienced lately besides Annie, undid something.

All the quiet ache she’d been carrying cracked under that smile. She didn’t know how badly she’d wanted to be seen, until she was.

A quiet shattering.

She didn’t run to her. Didn’t move at all, really. Her mind and body refused to trust it. Afraid that if she blinked, she’d lose her twice.

But her heart wanted so badly to believe what was ahead of her. To hold her Nana just one more time.

Tears welled up slowly, then hot. One slipped down her cheek, then another.

Her grandmother continued to rock, looking on at Mitena worriedly. 

The man’s voice continued, mournful and a hum laced with ache.

I know the truth hurts…

The line struck deep in Mitena. Her chest constricted. Her hands trembled.

Because she had lied too. Lied when she said she could carry all this alone. Lied when she swore she wouldn’t look back, wouldn’t break the peace she’d managed to stitch together.

And yet, here she was. Split open by a smile. Undone by a ghost, or an imagination caused by a mental breakdown, who didn’t even speak. Hushi only continued to watch her with a look of love too full to carry.

Hushi’s mouth moved then. A shape of words. Familiar and said before, but no sounds came out. As if the sound was muted on a television screen. 

Her wrinkled hand reached out in the direction of Mitena.

Mitena leaned forward without realizing, and her chest caved before she could stop it. A cry tore up from her ribs, sharp and wailing. A single sob that splintered into the world.

But then the shimmer broke.

The light snapped back into ordinary.

The insects began their hums again.

Objects began to take shape.

The chair was gone, along with the woman in it.

And it struck her, all at once, how different this was.

Her gift, her curse of memory, had always dragged other people’s pasts through her skin. Made her a vessel for stories that weren’t hers to carry. She touched strangers and saw their ancestors, their grief, their dying days, and their happy moments sprinkled in.

But this?

This was her blood. Her memory. Her loss. And she hadn’t summoned it. He had .

Something about his music had called her grandmother forward, not her own hands. That had never been a possibility before.

And that terrified her more than anything. Because it meant someone else could call what she held sacred. And worse, it meant someone else might hear her ghosts louder than she could.

The melody broke somewhere ahead of her. A boot scuffed against wood. Words rose, uncertain, half-shaped, but didn’t make it out.

But Mitena was already turning, already walking fast and blind, the heat behind her eyes too much. Her throat burned, but she didn’t cry again. Or, she tried not to.

She made it halfway down the path, stumbling with shame chasing her heels, before she heard him. Mr. Deep Voice behind her.

“Miss?” His voice was careful and gentle.

Mitena stopped, but barely.

She heard him jog a few steps closer, keeping some distance, and she turned to face him.

His guitar was still slung across his back, one hand resting on the strap as if keeping him grounded.

“...You alright?”

She blinked up at him. 

Up close, his youth was clear, but something older lived in the way he stood. Warm brown skin, sweat damping his shirt. His face was all angles softened by kindness, full lips and sharp cheekbones. But it was his eyes, deep-set, that searched hers with quiet worry, catching the redness rimmed around her lashes, the flush still high on her cheeks.

He shuffled in place a bit at her silence. “Didn’t mean to bother you none. Just saw you walkin’ off real fast…And you forgot your bag.” He lifted up the worn leather bag she carried.

Mitena nodded, and swallowed hard. She wiped at her face with her forearm. “Sorry. Jus’ somethin’ I remembered. Thanks for givin’ me my bag.” And gently took it from his outstretched hand.

He paused, then surprisingly warm, “You okay to walk? I can walk with ya’.”

Mitena didn’t answer right away. She wiped her face again, slower this time, like the motion might erase the weight behind her eyes. Then she nodded.

“Yeah, that’s fine with me.” She offered a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

He didn’t press. Just shifted his guitar on his back and fell into step beside her as they started down the narrow path back toward town. 

For a while, neither of them spoke. The quiet wasn’t tense, but full.

After a few minutes, he tilted his head slightly toward her. “I’m Sammie, by the way. Sammie Moore. But folks call me Preacher Boy.”

She glanced over. “Mitena. Mitena Lewis.”

Sammie nodded. “Steady hands, right?”

She gave a half-smile. “That’ll be me.”

Another pause. The dirt road curved, and their footsteps scuffed lightly over dry patches.

“You from Mississippi?” he asked, not nosy, just casual.

“Yeah,” Mitena said.

He gave a lazy half-smile. “Mm. Thought I heard the Delta in you.”

Mitena huffed a breath that might’ve been a laugh, if it weren’t still choked by grief. By the time the path curved near the edge of town, the sky had softened into that deepening lavender hue that meant night was close. Fireflies blinked in and out along the treeline.

Sammie slowed a little, letting his steps drift. “Well…hope your evenin’ gets easier, Miss Mitena.”

“Please, just Mitena. Thanks for walkin’ with me, Sammie.”

He gave a slight shrug. “Thought maybe some company back might help the trip feel shorter. Tell Annie I said hi.”

With a grateful nod, Mitena turned and made her way through the tall grass, heading back toward Annie’s.

Only when the door clicked shut behind her, nearly thirty minutes later, did she let herself feel it. The memory surged up, uninvited. Tears slipped fast, the weight returning all at once. Her shoulders dropped, like she hadn’t noticed how tightly she’d braced until the ache gave way.

Annie, standing by the stove, turned at the sound. Her eyes landed on Mitena, red-rimmed, quiet, undone, and in the next breath, she crossed the room and pulled her close.

No words were exchanged between the two.

Just arms around her, steady and sure, like she didn’t need to know the details to understand the ache. Like Annie already understood what kind of day it’d been.

Mitena thought of her grandmother’s lips, moving in silence. A whisper unspoken, coming back to her like breath through cracked ribs.

You carry me, Mit. Always did.

☾***☾

By the time the birds settled into their morning chorus, Mitena was already halfway down the dirt road, a list from Annie tucked into one palm, an empty basket in another, and the heat pressing at her back. 

The air tasted of humidity and dust, and not even her navy dress with loose flutter sleeves and swing hem kept the warmth from clinging. Her hair was pinned in a soft twist at the nape of her neck, a few strands already working loose. She didn’t mind. The rhythm of walking steadied her. 

And after the night she’d had, steady was enough. Appreciated even.

When the storefront came into view, Mitena slowed her pace. 

CHOW & CO. GROCERY  

Like a beacon in the harsh heat. She stepped inside and was met with the grounding scents of wood, burlap, and peppermint. Comfort in its plainest form.

Bo looked up from behind the counter, squinting toward the doorway before his expression shifted to a conspiratorial one.

“Well now, Miss Lewis,” he said, brushing dust from his sleeves. “I got some gossip fresh off the skillet. You missed a fine show.”

Mitena raised a brow, stepping further inside and reaching Bo at the shop counter. “Don’t tease me, Mr. Chow. It’s too hot for riddles. Do tell.”

Bo grinned wide, leaning an elbow on the counter like he’d been waiting all morning for someone to ask. 

“Guess who rolled through here, not even twenty minutes ago, smellin’ like pipe smoke and trouble?”

Mitena chuckled, hand on hip. “That could be half this town.”

Bo leans in even closer, “Ya’ just missed him.”

Mitena blinked. “Missed who?”

“Smoke,” he said, like the name should mean something. Then, seeing the blank look in her expression, he gave a small chuckle. “Ah—right. Guess Annie ain’t the type to share what ain’t yours to carry.”

Mitena didn’t respond, but just waited.

Bo smiled at a passing customer, but his voice dropped after they moved by. “Name’s Elijah Moore, but folks ’round here call him Smoke. His twin brother’s Stack, Elias. They used to run these roads like they owned ’em. Their daddy wasn’t worth much. Mean as hell, and meaner when he drank. After he died, both boys shipped off to war. Germany, I think.”

Mitena hummed for him to continue, absorbed by the tale of the mysterious men.

Bo looked down, hesitating with his next words, “Them boys came back changed, harder in the eyes. Then Chicago scooped ‘em up. Ran with Capone for a while, I heard. They been gone for some time, but today?” He smirked in excitement, “Stormed in like he never left, and said he needed supplies. Fast.”

Mitena’s face scrunched in confusion, “Supplies for what?”

“For some juke joint he and his brother are openin’ by the old saw mill tonight.”

Mitena raised a brow. “That’s a quick turnaround. But Annie ain’t mention nothin’ about him to me.”

“She wouldn’t,” Bo said. “Ain’t my business to say much more, but she’s the only reason he sets foot back in Clarksdale. Always was.”

He added, almost as an afterthought, “Oh, and they’re nephews to Preacher Jedediah. Makes ‘em cousins to that boy Sammie.”

Mitena’s brows lifted at that. Hard to picture someone as warm as Sammie tied to names that stirred this much weight.

Bo shifted after a moment of contemplation, and then spoke. “But between you and me, I’d keep an eye out. Where there’s Smoke, Stack ain’t far behind. And that one? He don’t move quiet.” He chuckled. “Anyway, why don’t you hand me your list, I’ll grab those things for ya’.”

Mitena thanked him quietly, her mind already sifting through anything Annie might have said about Smoke. Just one moment surfaced.

Her daddy dug the grave hisself. Not too far from the house…Brings flowers sometimes. When he’s 'round for it.

Bo came back from the storeroom with a small bundle in his arms, wrapped in butcher paper and tied off with string. He slid it across the counter with a smirk.

“Almost forgot,” he said, voice dipping low. “Smoke made a bit of a mess earlier.”

He glanced toward the doorway, then back. “Caught two fellas tryin’ to swipe liquor off his truck. Shot one in the ass, other in the leg.”

Mitena blinked. “Oh my goodness, they alright?”

Bo nodded, still half-laughing. “Far as I know. Smoke paid us to haul them down to the back room. Doc Eddie patched them up best he could. But between you and me, his hands been trembling somethin’ fierce lately.”

He leaned in, mock serious. “Might wanna swing by tomorrow, just in case one of ’em got a knee sewn to their shin.”

Mitena shook her head, half-laughing. “Lord have mercy. I’ll see what I can do.”

Mitena stepped back into the daylight with Annie’s words lingering in her mind, and her basket filled. The sun had risen higher, and the heat was pressing all around. Bo called out a goodbye behind her, and Mitena shouted one back.

She usually avoided the shortcut near the train depot, it was too dusty and loud. But today, something pulled her that way.

The sound hit first. A wail, high and sharp, curling through the heat with aching precision. It stretched long and low through the air, beautiful and strange. 

A harmonica, played for show but reaching for something deeper. Someone was playing, and the air held still to hear it.

As she neared the depot, the scene came into view through the slats of a metal fence.

A man, perched on a crate like it was a throne, hunched over and sleeves rolled up, vest sun-faded and mouth pressed to a harmonica like it was a holy relic. His cheeks puffed out with each breath, drawing out a tune so smokey it turned heads without asking for permission. The sound weaved through the ruckus and noise of the station.

Delta Slim.

Mitena recognized him instantly. Not from song, but from the bottle of ginger she’d handed him a few nights back when he’d staggered into Annie’s coughing and blaming, “bad oil and corn liquor.” Heartburn, was what Mitena replied, as she urged him to keep sipping from the ginger drink and eat a damn proper meal. 

He’d laughed so hard he wheezed, then muttered some 'yeah’s’. She hadn’t thought he’d listen, especially after he offered her a swing of his flask, either as thanks or payment. She still wasn’t sure which. Nevertheless, she declined, unamused.

You could lead a horse to water, but you couldn’t force it to drink.

Now he was upright, but looking none the worse for wear. 

And beside him was a younger man, the one with a voice that could bend air, now accompanying Slim with a guitar.

Sammie.

But the handsome man beside them, dressed sharp with a fedora tilted just so, wore a grin too sure of itself. She didn’t know him. But the way folks gathered close, listening as he announced something with too much charm and too little shame, gave her a clue. Their heads turned when he spoke, half fear, half respect. And the dust seemed to part for his steps like it already knew to move.

It had to be Smoke or Stack. 

And she didn’t learn which one until she returned to Annie’s.

The sun had crept high enough to bake the roof tiles, and sweat gathered at her temples. The house had settled into that soft lull that came just before noon.

The screen door creaked as Mitena stepped inside. Light slanted across the space in long stripes, warm and dust-swirled. 

Then she heard voices. 

One familiar, another low and rough. Not Annie’s usual clipped quiet, but tight, like something barely held back, brittle at the edges.

She almost turned back, but then, “Why you here, Smoke?” 

Annie’s voice. Steady but not soft. An sharp edge tinged in her words.

There was a pause, then the man’s reply, deep and rough-edged. “We was hopin’ you would serve food tonight. We want you to cook for us.”

Annie quickly followed up, “Elijah.” Mitena knew she meant business, but her tone was softer this time. Vulnerable. 

Smoke sounded defeated, tired. “You wanna make me say it? Still hurts comin’ back here. But I love you...and I miss ya’.” The ache in his voice was raw.

Mitena decided she’d lingered long enough and moved to leave, but the door creaked before she made it out.

The air shifted as Smoke turned toward her. She met his eyes, spine straightening. He looked at her like a threat.

“Who the fuck are you?”

Mitena stayed still, unsure how to answer.

Annie moved first.

“She’s with me,” she said, firm and final.

Smoke didn’t back off. “That so? Thought you didn’t let just anyone through your door.”

“She don’t need your permission to be here,” Annie shot back, voice cool and steady.

But Mitena, sensing the mood splintering, stepped in before it soured further. “Mitena Lewis. I lend a hand to Annie. Mostly healing and stitches. Ain’t lookin’ for a fight here.”

Smoke’s eyes didn’t soften. They just stayed on her, suspiciously, clocking details like a man who trusted no one on sight.

Annie didn’t move. Didn’t blink, waiting to see if she would need to interfere again.

Mitena didn’t move either.

And then Smoke finally turned back to the counter. “Huh,” he muttered, like that settled nothing at all. He struck a match and lit the small pipe in his palm, the flame flickering as he inhaled. A curl of smoke slipped from his lips.

“So, you the steady hands Bo mentioned.” Smoke just kept puffing, like he was still waiting to decide if her presence meant anything at all.

Mitena spoke before Annie could. “Happy to help where I can.”

Annie glanced over to Mitena, just briefly, and something close to fondness flickered there, quiet but sure.

Smoke caught the look, his jaw flexed, and he bit down on his pipe.

He didn’t speak right away, just took a slow pull from his pipe again, and let the silence hold. “​​Didn’t think Annie was takin’ on help these days.”

Mitena met his gaze. “Guess she made an exception.”

Annie didn’t say anything, but the corner of her mouth pulled, just barely.

Mitena moved to set the supplies from the Chow’s down, careful in her movements.

He spoke again. Not cold this time, but still measuring. “You cook?” he asked, not out of curiosity, but necessity.

Mitena shook her head, but her brow furrowed. “Enough to get by. I ain’t no Annie in the kitchen.”

A short grunt of what might’ve been amusement sounded out from Smoke. “Good. Least you honest.”

Annie sighed, muttered something in Creole under her breath, and turned back into the shop. 

Smoke watched her go, then jerked his chin toward the doorway. “We openin’ the joint tonight, sure you heard from Bo. We short a few hands.”

Mitena raised a brow, connecting the dots in the conversation. “You really askin’ me to cook?”

Smoke smirked, just barely. “Nah, not anymore. Might’ve crossed my mind. But truth is, when folks get rowdy, best to have someone who knows how to stitch ’em back together.”

Mitena glanced toward Annie, who was already rinsing something in the basin, but gave the slightest nod.

“I got a follow-up house visit to make ‘fore the sun dips,” she said carefully. “But I’ll be back by mid-afternoon.”

“Good,” Smoke said, like that settled it. “You can ride with us.”

Mitena gave a small nod. “Alright then.”

Annie didn’t look back, but her voice cut through before Mitena left. “And wear somethin’ you don’t mind lookin’ pretty in.”

Chapter Text

     THE ground recoiled as his body struck the earth.

Orange mixing into rust, and rust bruising into violet. The air pulsed like a warning, and crows moved strangely overhead. Circling, warning of what was to come.

Remmick fell from the sky with a low grunt, both feet landing hard with a jolt, his hand catching the dirt before it could claim his face. 

He didn’t stay down. Couldn’t. 

He was too weak, too thirsty, and running out of time, with the last shred of daylight searing his skin and impeding on his ability of flight.

He scrambled back up, half-running, half-limping. Sun hissed where the sun still kissed skin, and smoke curled off his shoulders like steam from a broken pipe. 

His shirt, half-burned and pressed against skin in scorched strips, did nothing to shield the heat. 

He staggered across the road, one eye swollen shut, breath ragged, and footsteps jagged. His legs buckled with each step, like the ground was threatening to open beneath him.

Behind him, in the far off distance, his enhanced hearing picked up the sounds of men.

Men on horseback. Tires grinding on dirt. Choctaw voices in calls of battle and warning.

He tried not to look back.

A house emerged from the shimmer of the heat, with brown wood dull and dry. The porch sagged, and a single light blinked from the inside, too dim to be welcoming to those outside.

Remmick didn’t hesitate. 

He climbed up the steps in hurry, chest heaving with one palm already lifted. 

He pounded on the door once. Again. Twice more. Next louder, fist slamming against the weathered door.

“Help—” he choked out. Remmick let the word drag, the sound wobbling between plea and performance. Just enough to feel real. 

Enough pause to make whoever was inside believe. 

And it worked. The doors yanked open, but rifles met him first.

A man and a woman stood framed by the doorway, and backlit by the dim light inside. Their rifles clutched tightly in their grip.

The man was wiry and pale. Face pinched and mean, the kind of man who shot first and asked questions later. The woman stood close beside him, perspiration darkening the collar of her dress, lean with eyes rimmed in sweat and suspicion. 

Her eyes didn’t blink.

They looked like people who didn’t open the door to be helpful.

“Back up,” the man snapped, staring down the barrel of his weapon.

Remmick’s hands flew up, palms out, open and quivering. The perfect image of surrender.

“Y’all—ya’ll gotta help,” he stammered, eyes flicking over his shoulder like he expected gunfire to split the dusk behind him. “I thought I could trust ‘em. But they—they tryin’ to kill me.”

The couple didn’t lower their rifles, and the man barked, “Slow down.”

The woman squinted, her suspicion edged with something near surprise. “Who’s tryna kill you?”

Remmick jabbed a finger toward the road. “Choctaw!” He spat it fast, like it scorched his tongue. Not because he believed it did, but because he knew it’d land with folks like them.

The man’s nose curled. “Ya sure it wasn’t just some fair-skinned n*gg*rs? Ain’t no Injuns ‘round here for miles.”

Remmick flinched slightly. 

Not from the word alone, but from the banality behind it. That old, rotted kind of hate. The inheritance of cruelty like gospel passed down. 

He’d heard slurs in Latin, in Saxon, in tongues now dust. Watched innocents burn under banners blessed by kings. Watched churches rise over forests where his gods once breathed.

It was always the same. Cruelty wearing a new face, needing someone beneath its boot to feel holy.

He’d lived through the theft of his own kin, his land, his tongue, and his rituals. Taken by empires and God in the same breath. 

Remmick never forgot the devastation, the hunger, behind it. How easy it was for man to trade his humanity for power, so long as someone else was made unclean.

And now, on a sunburnt porch in Mississippi, with rifles raised by a couple who never had their tongue outlawed, their religion defiled, their skin seen as a sin, it made his fingers twitch for violence. 

But not yet. Not here. 

Remmick didn’t entertain an answer, but the performance was still on. 

He let his knees give out, hitting the porch with a thud. He let the theatrics behind it all shudder through him, even as rage stayed leashed.

His shoulders slumped, like shame belonged to him, and gasped, “They took my wife.” He choked out, “Oh god.”

The grief in his voice came from muscle memory. Performed, but real enough.

His voice cracked in the places where grief still echoed. One hand curled in his hair, the other hovered at his chest like it hurt to breathe.

“I’m a coward, ain’t I?” He said, voice cracking.

He let the silence stretch. “They took my wife,” he said again, quieter this time, like it cost him to say the words.

In the crevices between lie and truth, Mitena’s name stirred. Because his words weren’t entirely lies. 

In his bones, in his memory, in the ache of centuries—she was still his wife. 

Bound to him in vow and blood. In silk and firelight. Long before places like Mississippi had a name.

He still wore the ring she had given him. Still dreamed of her trembling hands tying the ribbon that bound them.

But now, her smile belonged to strangers. Her heart softened in someone else’s hands. She wept not for him, but for boys like Peter. To kin. To a home she was trying to find, and thought she belonged in.

They hadn’t taken her physically, but they had taken her all the same. 

They did it with songs. With memory. With the comfort of welcome and warmth. 

With the lie that she belonged with them.

The people she belonged to in this life didn’t remember who she was. They didn’t understand the weight she carried. They couldn’t see how far they were pulling her from the truth of what lived beneath her skin.

They couldn’t see the vow still tethered to her bones. To his. Couldn’t hear the names he had once moaned against her skin.

He shook the memory loose.

Remmick’s gaze drifted. Past the rifles, past the woman’s sweat-slick jaw and the man’s wary squint, and into the house. 

There, in the shadows behind them, he saw it. 

Bone-white fabric on a slat-backed wooden chair.

A Klan hood. Sitting out in pride, catching what little light the dim room offered.

His mouth twitched downward. 

No point in playing the grief card, he thought, jaw tightening. These bastards wouldn’t mourn a dead dog.

Remmick shifted his tactic.

“H-hey.” His hand moved slowly, shakily, to his pocket. “I—I got gold.”

He pulled out a handful of gold. Coins, old and worn. Stamped with the faces of kings whose realms had long since rotted into the earth. 

The gold caught the light and glinted prettily enough.

A pause and a breath, “Them dirty Injuns—” 

The word tasted like ash. He hated saying it, hated what it did to his mouth. Hated having to resort to it. 

But worse still was how easy it was. How quickly cruelty could be borrowed when survival asked for it. Just as long as your skin passed inspection.

That was the trick, wasn’t it?

He could wear violence like a mask and be believed. Could weaponize hate, and be rewarded. He looked like them, and that meant the door opened and his lies held weight.

A lesson hard learned across his centuries of existence, and of watching who got to speak, and who got silenced. 

It was a privilege he never asked for, though one he learned to wield all the same. But he hoped that with Mitena beside him, and fellowship of his own, he could unmake the system that made monsters of them all.

“—Meant to rob me,” he continued. He held the coins out, hands trembling slightly, his voice raspy.

“They ain’t get all of it.”

He watched their eyes drop to the gold, and watched their stances shift. And hated them for how easy it was, how fast greed cracked their suspicion.

“Y'all can have it. Jus’ don’t let ‘em hurt me no more.” He finished, voice dropping into something deceptively soft. 

The man’s gun dipped slightly, and the woman’s gun followed shortly after. Both their expressions changed from suspicion to want.

They traded a glance. A silent agreement.

He’s no threat, and the gold makes it worth it.

How wrong they were.

The man held his palm out in anticipation. Fee for entry. 

Remmick dumped the coins into the greedy hand.

“Get inside,” the man muttered with satisfaction.The woman stepped back from the doorway.

An invitation they would soon regret.

“Quick now,” the man barked. Remmick rose slowly, careful not to smirk.

He stepped through. The door shut like the lid on a coffin behind him. 

Fatal and final.

The woman threw the bolt closed behind him with a loud clack, but Remmick didn’t flinch. His eyes had already begun to adjust to the gloom inside. The air was stale, a mixture of grease, old wood, and something sour tucked beneath.

The man studied the coins in his palm, held them up close by the flame from a candle. The glittering relics from worlds they would never understand. He turned one over with a grunt.

“Where’d you get these?” he asked, not looking up.

Remmick’s lips twitched. “Found ‘em.”

The man’s laugh was dry. “Good enough for me.”

The woman didn’t laugh. Her gaze lingered on Remmick’s scorched appearance, ripped wife beater, and raw skin. The only items undamaged were his wedding band on his ring finger, and chain dangling around his neck.

“You sick or somethin’?” she asked, inching back. Far enough to watch him, close enough to grab the rifle.

Remmick shook his head. “No ma’am. Jus’ tired.” he deflected. “And grateful. Still hurtin’ from the run.” He finished with a charming smile. 

“You got a name?” the man asked.

“Remmick.”

They exchanged another glance. The kind meant to gauge if he was worth the trouble.

“Sit, if you’re gonna sit,” she said, eyes still on him.

He did, lowering himself slowly onto the edge of a stiff chair. The wood creaked beneath him, but he made no move to get comfortable. He kept his hands visible, palms flat on his thighs.

Remmick’s eyes moved, observantly around the small space. A bible cracked open on the side table, spine broken from overuse. The plate on the counter with half a biscuit rested cold. Dust had settled on the corners, like someone cleaned in a hurry, but didn’t care to finish.

And further back, past the hallway, a door was left ajar. Just enough to see what waited. Dark wood walls, a rocking chair, and a crib pushed against the wall.

Remmick’s eyes returned to the man, who had moved toward the front window now, peeking between the faded curtains.

“Truck and horses,” he muttered. “Those Injuns are comin’.”

He turned, picked up his rifle from the corner, and gestured to Remmick with the butt of the gun towards the end of the hall.

“Back room,” he snapped, nodding toward the direction of the room. “Quick.”

Remmick gave a small nod, and rose obediently, letting them think they were in charge.

Before he followed, the man leaned toward the woman and whispered. “I’ll deal with him first. You stay here. If those damn fuckers come knockin’, you hold steady.”

She blinked, and shifted the grip on the rifle. “You think he’s lyin’?”

“Ain’t sure,” he muttered. “Scared men don’t carry gold unless they got steel somewhere too. Somethin’ don’t sit right.”

Then, barely above a breath, he added, “Won’t be long, baby.”

He didn’t know the man behind him could hear ants crawl, or hearts lie.

He turned back to Remmick. “Go on, now.”

Remmick stepped forward, walking the hall with a steadiness the man failed to notice, a shift from the trembling figure he let in.

They both stepped inside the room now, and Remmick’s eyes swept the space. 

A nursery. Or the ghost of one.

The walls, which had probably been a rich brown, were lusterless. The crib he noticed earlier, sat near a rocking chair looking untouched and unused. 

A few hand-carved blocks sat in a neat line on the floor, too clean to have ever been played with. One bore a crooked letter B.

There were no other toys, bottles, or blankets with spit-up stains or frayed corners from use. Just the idea of a child emanated from the area. As if waiting to be conjured.

A small ache bloomed in Remmick’s chest. A pang of quiet sympathy. The kind that lived in a man who once dreamed of building something larger than himself. A clan. A covenant. A home.

The kind of man who had once knelt beneath moonlight, ribbon-bound to a woman he still saw in his memories and heart.

Remmick looked at the chair again, then the crib, and imagined her in this sort of space. Hands on her belly, and smiling in that rare and soft way.

The vision turned and melted, and she was gone. But here he was, in a stranger’s house, hiding like an animal.

Though, not for long.

He stood in the middle of the room as the man closed the door shut behind them both. There was a brief hush, and the whispers of ill-intentions spoke out. 

Remmick turned toward the man behind him, and spoke first. “This room…y’all got children?” Remmick asked, letting his voice falter slightly.

A beat passed.

The man answered with a snap. “No.” He didn’t say more, but his features softened as he looked around the space. “Tryin’.”

Remmick took a slow step closer. “Ain’t right, is it? Wantin’ somethin’ so bad and havin’ the world spit in your face for it.”

The man’s eyes flicked to the crib, his hold on the rifle tightening and his jaw flexing. “My wife—Joan—thinks we’re cursed by God.”

Remmick let the silence bloom between them, letting the softness of the moment rise. 

“I used to think that too,” Remmick murmured. Another step closer. “ Til I learned that the world don’t curse you. It jus’ don’t care ‘bout ‘ya.”

He stepped forward again, now only a couple of steps away from the man.

“You want a family. So do I.”

The man’s brow creased, shoulders tensed, as if finally sensing something wrong with the moment. With the man in front of him.

“I built one,” Remmick said, voice honeyed and low. “Was full of idiots, sure. But they took ‘em from me. Now, I’m gon’ try again. One full of peace and love.”

And with that last line, the man didn’t move fast enough. 

Remmick’s hand lashed forward, faster than thought, and closed the distance in a blink. Fingers driving into the man’s throat with brutal grace. Next his mouth was on his neck. There was a crunch, wet and delicate. The snap of motion and flesh parting.

His fangs sank into the man’s throat, below his jaw. Hot blood pulsed against his tongue, hues of boysenberry and rage coating Remmick’s tongue.

The man thrashed once, twice, then sagged. A gurgle in his mouth sounded in the small space, wet and garbled.

Remmick held him there, breath steady, drinking in long, quiet pulls.

After that, he let go. 

He collapsed by the crib, blood spilling in slow, seeping threads. Bright red and wrong against the floorboards. In a room meant for beginnings, not endings.

Remmick stepped over the body with little thought, like a man crossing a puddle, not a corpse. 

The man lay stomach-down, arms limp, face half-turned toward the crib. Blood soaked his cheek and poured from the torn crescent of his neck, his body twitching once before settling.

Remmick took the rocking chair, casually and without hurry.

And a long breath left him, heavy and quiet. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, but it only smeared more red. 

His skin was slick with blood, across his throat, caked in the creases of his collarbone, and splattered down his arms and chest. Blood darkened everything it touched.

His lips parted slightly. The fangs were still there. Piercing. And his claws, long, pale, almost translucent at the tips, curled into the worn wood of the armrest, tapping softly.

Slowly, he began to rock.

The chair creaked with each motion. Forward and back, forward and back, as if mimicking a lullaby long since soured.

Remmick sat like a man sated. Restored. A predator no longer running, but resting in the den.

The sun’s scorch faded from his skin, strength sliding back into his bones. And the light from the sun, peeking out from beneath the doorway, was nearly vanished. The room smelled like blood and dust. But to him, it smelled like victory.

So, he just waited.

Because this Joan would come.

And when she opened that door, he’d greet her properly.

He could’ve left her husband, whatever his name was, to rot and could have torn them apart.

But instead? He was offering her a gift.

A husband returned. A purpose renewed, with none of the bigoted crap following. 

A place beside Remmick, in harmony.

☾***☾

The truck crested the hill.

Dust trailed the tires in slow spirals, streaking the dry dusk air. Two horsemen flanked the truck, one leading, one guarding the rear. 

Their cries rang out. Not in English, but Choctaw. Warnings. Ritual. War-song.

Up ahead, crows turned above a house, their splintered cries slicing through the thick heat. 

Inside the truck, Yakni watched the house come into view. His stomach turned, from fear and knowing. They were too late, or nearly were.

The truck rolled to a stop. Dust clung to his boots as he stepped out of the passenger seat. 

Willard swung down from his horse near the front of the truck. Hugh waited behind them, still mounted. In the bed of the truck, Arthur, Jon, and Alton stood with their rifles ready. Dennis gripped the wheel, eyes locked and analyzing the house ahead. 

Yakni was surveying the area too. 

They didn’t need signs or symbols, just the land. The branches torn from treetops, too high for any axe or man. A fencepost split like it’d been struck by thunder. Footprints wide-set, sunk deep, and vanishing mid-stride.

Yakni had followed worse trails before. But this one? It felt like chasing the eye of a storm.

Yakni adjusted his stance, exhaled, then made his way to the porch. He knocked quickly and deliberately. With the kind of purpose passed down from men who’d faced monsters before.

The door flew open, and he was met with a shotgun leveled between his eyes.

Yakni tilted his head back slightly, raising one hand in a placating gesture, meant to calm away the look of hatred from the woman in front of him.

His face betrayed no surprise, but behind him, the other hunters reacted fast. Rifles lifted and aimed. The porch creaked under the weight of the tension.

The woman’s jaw clenched from the numerous guns now pointed in her direction, her slick skin shining in the rapidly fading light.

Yakni held his voice steady. “Evenin’, ma’am.” No reply. Just the gun, steady as stone.

“We’re in pursuit of someone,” he said carefully. “...Very dangerous. Might’ve come on to your property.”

Her hold didn’t shift.

“Have you seen anyone recently?” Yakni glanced past her shoulder, subtle but too intent for her liking.

“Bert!” she hollered, loud enough to rattle the doorframe, while readjusting her gun on Yakni. 

He straightened. “Is he in there with you, ma’am?”

She raised the rifle higher.

Yakni didn’t let his voice waver. “He’s not what he seems.”

Yet, nothing. Just her eyes, sweat-glossed and tired, digging for any lie he might be hiding.

“God forbid you let him into your home,” he added. “If so, we need to act now.” He hated how thin his voice sounded, how close it came to begging. But there wasn’t time for pride. Not now. Not even when he noticed the stark white hood laid out behind her, displayed with dignity.

Behind him, Willard shouted in Choctaw, urgent. Pointing toward the horizon. 

“Let’s go! Hurry up! Let’s get home before it’s too late! ”

Yakni knew what he meant. They were losing the sun.

He didn’t turn and didn’t look back, but kept his gaze on the woman’s face.

She hadn’t blinked.

He could shoot her. Could force his way in. They had the numbers, and the firepower. 

But she wasn’t the enemy, at least not in this battle.

And she was already lost, as good as dead, and he did the only thing left to do. 

He lowered his hands, exhaled through his nose, and said in Choctaw, softly, “May God watch over you and be with you.”

Again, there was no response, but something in her eyes twitched. Not understanding, but maybe doubt over the circumstances, hopefully.

He stepped back, and turned back towards the rest of his group. Yakni lifted one hand in signal.

The rest of the hunters moved in practiced silence, swinging back onto horseback, lowering their rifles, and clambering back into the truck bed. Dennis stayed behind the wheel, clenching the wheel like he meant to break it, jaw clenched hard enough to crack teeth, and eyes on the porch.

Yakni followed last. He didn’t look back at the woman.

With Yakni back in the passenger seat, Dennis’ voice came low, bitter.

“That thing killed my boy. Tore his throat out like he was nothin’. And now we’re just leavin’? Letting it nest?”

He spat out the window, rage rattling in his chest. “We had him. Should’ve staked the bastard when we had the chance.”

The truck engine idled loud in the pause that followed.

Yakni didn’t answer at first, but watched the crows settle on the roof like they already knew what tragedies were coming.

Next, quietly, Yakni whispered, “I never knew your boy, but I’ve seen what things like him leave behind.”

Dennis’ hands stayed tight on the wheel, rage still there, but quieter now.

Yakni turned, voice low and certain. “You want justice. I do too. But we don’t get it rushing in blind and dying for nothing. He’s not young. Not reckless. Not some wanderin’ fledgling.”

Yakni finally looked back at him, eyes tired, voice even. “He’s old, and smarter than he looks. The kind of thing that’s been hiding long before we had words for what he was.”

A hush followed. The truck vibrated under them, engine grumbling low.

Yakni leaned back, and exhaled roughly.

“We’ll come back. When the sun’s on our side.”

Dennis didn’t speak, but his jaw ticked, once, and that was enough.

The men raised their voices in low hoots and calls, not celebration, but in mourning. 

The roofline of the house faded behind them. 

Yet, the crows stayed. The truck pulled away in a cloud of dust.

And she didn’t move until the sound of the loud engine disappeared.

Joan slammed the door harder than she intended to, and locked it with trembling fingers. 

She stood in the doorway, alone, and leaned against the door. The crows above scratched along the roof.

Her breath caught, with thoughts of brown faces and urgent voices. Ones that sounded like threats. 

“Bert?” she called out. 

No answer.

Joan set her rifle against the wall, and wiped the sweat from the back of her neck with the hem of her apron. Her shoulders hunched, and her spine felt heavy.

She moved toward the hallway.

“Injuns came and went,” she muttered. The words held no conviction. 

“Bert?” she called again, louder now.

Still nothing.

She paused outside the nursery. Something in her body always paused there. 

The room had become a wound neither she nor Bert spoke of. But it lived between them all the same.

It had been his idea, at first. The blocks, the rocking chair, the crib built by his hands. They’d even picked out names. The smile on his face when Benjamin was chosen was something she would always remember. 

But it never happened. Day after day, and month after month, just to feel like her body was betraying her. That it was broken.

He never mentioned it was her fault, but she saw the way his eyes changed. Hardened.

Noticed the way he touched her less. How he started keeping to himself after the last try.

Joan had told herself they’ll just try again, but deep down she’d suspected Bert had already given up. 

But she kept the nursery clean and prayed.

For what, she didn’t know anymore.

Wood creaking snapped her out of her spiral. Not coming from the hall, but inside.

The nursery. 

A consistent sound. Rocking.

Creak.

Creak.

Creak.

Back and forth, over and over.

She stepped forward, cautiously. 

“…Bert?”

Her hand brushed the doorframe, and slowly, she pushed it open.

The chair creaked once more, and then she saw him.

The man, Remmick she recalled, sat in the rocking chair like it belonged to him. His frame slouched and casual. Blood soaked through the front of his shirt, dark and glossy, slicked to him like a second skin. 

It dropped slow from his chin in thin threads, already drying on the creases of his mouth.

His eyes gleamed in the dark space, red and catching what little light the nursery held. His teeth, fangs, were curved and wet. Too razor-sharp to reside within any human’s mouth.

Their eyes met, Joan’s held captive against the playful stare of Remmick’s eyes.

“Oh,” he said, voice low and easy. A sick kind of mocking. “He’s jus’ restin’.”

Joan’s breath left her. She couldn’t move. Her eyes dragged downward.

And there he was. 

Her Bert.

Face down in a pool of blood beside the crib. One arm crooked unnaturally beneath him, the other reaching out for something. 

His neck was torn open, ripped wide in a jagged pattern, wound gaping like a second mouth.

Blood had already seeped beneath the crib legs, pooling around one of the wooden blocks.

A wooden block, stamped with the letter B, lay half-drowned in blood.

Her scream shattered the silence, cutting, high-pitched, and panicked. Then came the slow, syrupy rise of limbs from blood.

Bert stood in a series of jerks, shoulders first, then spine, lastly his neck. His breath shuddered in, sharp and wrong. When he turned, his eyes were white, reflexive. Not like the green eyes she fell in love with. 

His mouth hung open, as if remembering to breathe, and then he inhaled the air. Deeply, like savoring the scent of the air around him.

“Hey, baby,” he spoke. Tone sweet as apple pie. 

Another jagged scream tore loose from Joan. Out of complete shock, or in disbelief from how confident Bert now portrayed himself, she didn’t know.

The thing in the chair continued its leisure and confident rocking amidst Joan’s breakdown.

His fangs still bared, eyes burning red, he brought a clawed finger to his lips with blood soaked at the tips of each piercing finger. 

“Shhh,” he whispered. “Don’t cry.”

But she did anyway. 

Her scream cracked at the edges, raw and frayed, breath jagged as the scent of iron crowded her lungs. It didn’t stop as she stumbled back against the doorframe.

Suddenly, Bert moved. 

Not like a man, but as a marionette. With sudden movements, and hands outstretched, he lunged in her direction.

Joan scrambled out of the room, and tried to shut the door behind her, but he was quicker than any man should be.

His fingers caught through the wood, splinters flying in every direction as the door between them disintegrated with inhumane force. 

Bert was on her, his blood-slick hands pressing painfully into her arms, his smile stretching wrong, pointed fangs replaced his once straight teeth.

She shrieked, kicked, shoved, anything to get him away from her. “Don’t,” she rasped. “Please, you’re hurtin’ me—”

But his grasp tightened, and he stared down at her as if he couldn’t hear her.

Remmick, gone from his comfortable position in the chair, stepped closer to their position. Now quiet and watching, causing Bert to look briefly behind him.

In his slight moment of distraction, Joan’s nails raked down Bert’s face. He flinched, and she managed to twist free and bolt down the hall and towards the direction of the kitchen, for the rifle leaning against the wall. 

But a force slammed against her back, strong and forceful, knocking her out off her feet. 

Her body crashed to the floor with a sickening thud, ribs first. The scream that followed was raw with pain. 

Bert crouched above her. With eyes glowing and grinning with an expression akin to ecstasy.

“Jus’ relax, baby. The death part ain’t too bad. Promise.” He said. 

Remmick walked calmly to where she lay, stared down at her in reassurance. “Now, don’t you worry. We’ll be family soon enough.”

She stared up at him in hatred. Not only for whatever he made Bert into, but for what Bert was about to make her.

“What you do to him?” She sobbed. “You…you’re the devil!” Joan spat. She twisted in Bert’s hold, his weight pinning her down. 

“Lord help me,” she murmured as Bert sank his mouth into her throat, tearing through skin like parchment. The sound tore through the room, wet and visceral.

“No—don’t!” Joan screamed in anguish, her body flailing beneath him. 

“There now,” Remmick murmured. “You’ll be good as new.”

Moments later one last scream sounded out, next silence.

Nothing moved but the dust drifting through the kitchen air, settling over blood still warm.

Chapter Text

Evening — Just before Juke Joint Opening

     “THAT sign betta’ be dry by the time the crowd gets here,” Smoke muttered, balancing a fuse box on one knee with his foot resting on the bumper of a car. His complaints had only been building all afternoon. Now, as opening time drew close, Grace, along with the freshly painted ‘Club Juke’ sign in red, was his latest target.

Mitena didn’t comment. She stood at the back of the truck she arrived in with Smoke and Annie, hands clamped tight around the medic bag no one had asked her to bring. Her fingers ached from holding it too tight.

“They’ll come in drunk, they’ll leave mean, and in-between, someone’s gonna need stitches.” That’s what he told her earlier, pressing a key into her palm for the storage room, the night’s makeshift infirmary, without looking. Her job for the night was clear.

The truck door creaked open. Annie climbed down with a bag of onions tucked under one arm and a roll of butcher paper under the other. She didn’t speak, but tilted her head toward the main entrance, where the kitchen had been set up and where pots were already beginning to steam. She’d already taken Mitena’s dress for the night and left it in the back where the women would change before the crowd arrived.

Mitena stayed back. Her boots crunched against gravel as she shifted her weight, the medic bag bumping her thigh with every motion. She took in every sight in front of her.

The juke joint stood patched together with metal and wood. Mitena had never seen a place like this before, not outside of black and white photos shown in books, but even those felt too polished. The building looked slapped together, like it should have already crumbled but hadn’t out of spite. Rust curled around the seams of the walls. One side leaned harder than the other. Yet, the red sign above the door, Club Juke, shined like it had something to prove. 

The closer she got, the more it breathed to life. Not originally built as a place for music, but ready to prove that it could be. New light spilled out the doorway and windows in gold streaks, and inside voices, boots, laughter, and clatter followed.

It didn’t look like a place that should’ve stood out, but something told Mitena it would tonight.

Breaking her concentration, the low grind of another engine rumbled up the drive, heavier than the trucks before. A flatbed rolled into view, its bed crowded with men still dusted from daywork. Sharecoppers, by the look of them. 

One by one, they climbed down, unloading crates, coils of wire, and ladders. With no fanfare, they made their way toward the building, voices low, and movements synchronized.

The air shifted, dust rising and the heat softened. Mitena adjusted the grip on her bag, shoulders tight. Movement stirred behind her, and gravel shifted again.

She turned slightly, just enough to watch another car crawl up the drive. Faster than the flatbed before it. Louder, too. The engine didn’t rumble, it purred, almost smug, before coasting to a crooked stop in the dirt.

The door swung open with a metallic creak. Cornbread climbed out first, boots hitting the ground with slow and steady rhythm. He wore his wide brimmed hat straight on his head, and his overalls still covered from a hard day's work. When he spotted Mitena, his face softened. 

“Evenin’ Miss Mitena,” he said, plainspoken yet kind, like someone greeting a friend. He tipped his head, just enough to say he saw her.

She returned the smile, softer now. “How’s Therese?” she asked gently.

His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Holdin’ steady,” he chuckled, the faintest note of relief in it. “Been askin’ for you, actually.”

Warmth settled behind her ribs. She nodded once. “I’ll stop by soon.”

Cornbread gave a low hum in acknowledgement, then tipped his head again, as if not knowing how else to respond. Without another word, he crossed the gravel and headed toward the porch, where he took up post by the door, arms folded. Watchful and ready.

Mitena followed him with her eyes a moment longer. When Annie mentioned Cornbread would be working the door, she found humor in the statement. She’d expected a hired hand with a mean mug and brass knuckles, not the soft-spoken man who wore decency like a second-skin.

Still, there was a steady presence to Cornbread. The kind of presence that told folks where the line was and kept order. 

She exhaled slow, and for the first time that evening, her grip on her medic bag loosened.

The vehicle door opened again behind her. Delta Slim stepped out with the lazy care of a man whose back had been stiff since his youth. He stretched once, spine popping, then gave a low groan. “I’m tellin’ ya, this betta’ be worth the sweat,” he muttered, reaching into his trouser pocket for a dented silver flask.

A few men working cables near the side of the joint looked up. One let out a low whistle. “That’s Delta Slim,” someone muttered. Another tipped his cap in respect, eyes wide.

Delta didn’t break stride, but gave a faint grunt. Like praise itched worse than sweat. Though, the weight of him changed the air. Folks like him didn’t need an introduction. His name always showed up before he did.

Sammie followed right behind, guitar case in hand, watching Delta like he was studying something important. A quiet imitation in the way he moved, how he stepped when Delta stepped, how his spine straightened when Delta’s did, as if he could learn that type of presence by staying close enough.

Delta caught it and didn’t say a word. Just flicked a glance toward him, then toward the entrance where the stage was waiting. A nudge without touch. Sammie nodded once and fell in step beside him.

Mitena caught the exchange from where she stood. Not much was said between them, but it was clear nonetheless. The thread between those two had already been formed. Not by blood, or familial closeness, but from something close enough to matter. Through the bond of music, and the sadness and yearning that came with it. Blues.

As they passed, Sammie tossed her a quick, crooked smile. Still boyish, still shy, but a little straighter now from the last time she saw him. Like standing near Delta made his spine feel taller.

Delta slowed for a moment, and tilted his head in her direction, taking in her observing gaze. His voice was sand-dry, amused, but a twinge of surprise.

“Didn’t peg ya for a juke joint girl,” he chuckled, more observation than joke. “Figured you’d keep quieter company than Smoke and Stack.” The names left his mouth together, a single sound, like they’d never been apart.

Mitena didn’t flinch, but smiled in mirth. “I did, then I got bored.”

He gave a hearty chortle, then kept on walking.“Let’s get this crowd loud enough to keep my name in their mouths ‘til next Sunday,” he shouted, swinging back his flask in the process.

Mitena without thinking called after Sammie, her voice quick but steady. “Lookin’ forward to hearin’ ya play tonight, Preacher Boy. Heard ‘bout your performance through the grape vine.”

He glanced back mid-step, the smile that followed sheepish but proud.

She didn’t say more, but let him go.

Still, the thought lingered.

Last time she heard him sing, the dead had reappeared. Part of her couldn’t help but wonder what might answer now.

The vehicle door slammed one final time.

Stack leaned against the frame like he’d been waiting for the moment her attention was all cleared up. His grin found her first.

“You Smoke’s nurse?” he called across the lot, voice warm but edged.

Mitena turned to him fully. 

He was strong, clean-lined in a dark pinstripe suit that caught any remaining light like it had something to say. A red handkerchief sat sharp in his front pocket. Burgundy hat tipped back just enough to show his full face. Sharp jaw, and a sharper grin. Everything worn with deceptive ease.

If Smoke was a closed door, Stack was the porch light left on. Same face beneath the brim, but where Smoke moved like a match about to strike, Stack moved like the fuse already burning.

Mitena tilted her head. “Only if he’s dyin’. And even then, I’d think about it.”

That earned a low, pleased laugh. He stepped away from the car and straightened his jacket, brushing dust from one sleeve with practiced fingers.

She let her gaze linger a second longer. On his cufflinks. The glint of gold in his teeth. 

The way his grin sharpened when he caught her looking.

Mitena rolled her eyes and shook her head, already regretting the pause in her stare.

Great. Now he thinks I was checkin’ him out.

She scoffed under her breath. “Don’t get cute. I was squintin’.”

“Well, squint a little harder next time. Might find somethin’ worth lookin’ at for longer.” Stack grinned, and walked toward her with a confident ease. The air around him buzzed, not like Smoke’s sharp edges, but something slower, smoother, the kind of charm that didn’t warn you before it hit.

Hushi once told her to be careful around the boys with pretty smiles and even prettier words. Said they could talk you out of your last dime, then leave you looking foolish for handing it over. The kind mama’s would warn about. Twice.

Mitena tried to remember the words Hushi used for those types.

Look-but-don’t-touch-boys.

She crossed her arms, eyes narrowing slightly. “That charm is screamin’ loud. Humble must’ve got left behind somewhere.”

He paused, tilting his head as if thinking about it, then laughed. Deeper this time, like her tone pulled it out honest.

“Yeah, well, bein’ humble ain’t never been my strength.” He smoothed the front of his jacket with both palms. 

“Hell, I been pickin’ out Smoke’s shirts since we could walk. One of us had to have taste.”

Mitena didn’t respond right away, though a faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

Something about the way he carried herself, bark wrapped in charm, made it hard to stay fully stone-faced.

Stack let the silence stretch, then angled his head, grin returning. “You got a name, or should I keep callin’ you Nurse?”

She snorted. “Pretty sure you heard it whispered here and there since you arrived.”

“Sure did. Jus’ wanted to see if you’d give it, Steady Hands.” In his mouth, the name curled into a tease.

She didn’t let her nickname rattle her, but held his gaze a second longer than was polite, then answered, “Mitena.”

“Stack,” he replied, like the name hadn’t already been passed around half the town since his arrival.

She gave a slow nod. “Figured. On the account of you lookin’ like Smoke. Only shinier.”

He smirked, smiling like he was delighted to be read that easy.

“Shinier, huh? I do try.”

He nodded his head toward the front entrance of the juke joint. “C’mon, now. We’re burnin’ light.”

Mitena didn’t follow right away.

She glanced past him toward the juke joint, where the crates thudded, cords dragged, and voices poured out the doorway like music. The night hadn’t started yet, but something was already stirring inside.

The hum of the room pulsed through her. Ain’t just patchin’ wounds tonight, she thought. Guess I’m watchin’ ‘em dance too.

For once, the world wasn’t something she stood outside of. It carried her too. 

She found herself smiling, and then stepped forward. Gravel shifted underfoot with a slight pep in her step.

The door creaked as she pushed through, and heat met her first. Fry oil, sweat, and the hum of too many bodies packed tight. The room throbbed with life, loud and stifling.

Everything felt alive, but mostly in the way that made her long for cool air and distance.

God, she thought. I miss air-conditioning.

Inside, the sawmill-turned-juke-joint hummed with the kind of noise that came from work. Chairs scraped the floor, the thump of crates being set down too hard, laughter sparking from opposite corners carried in waves across the open space.

Stack moved through the place like he’d done it a hundred times before, cutting toward the bar without looking back. Mitena followed, scanning the room in pieces.

Behind the bar, Grace barked orders like a general. 

“Bo, those bottles ain’t gonna walk themselves!” She stacked glasses in quick, precise rows, sleeves rolled past her elbows.

Annie stood beside her, arranging platters of catfish, grits, and cornbread in wide circles along the serving table.

Sweet and sharp smells thickened the air—vinegar, pepper, grease, and salt. 

Mitena’s stomach grumbled just sniffing it.

Annie glanced up long enough to nod at her, a check-in as opposed to a greeting, then returned back to her task.

Overhead, two hired hands worked a ladder with dangerous confidence. One bracing it from the floor, the other stringing bulbs along the beams. Each bulb flickered to life, casting soft gold light across the rafters. 

A man bumped past her with a crate, tucked against his chest. 

“‘Scuse me, ma’am,” he muttered, already moving.

She stepped aside as others crossed the room with chairs and tablecloths.

Nobody asked where to go or what to do, they just moved like they’d done this plenty of times before falling into their roles and tasks with ease.

And somehow, she was part of it.

No one paused when she entered. No one stared too long.

Her boots sounded like anyone else’s across the floorboards. 

And for a fleeting moment, the ache behind her ribs softened. 

It was the closest she’d come to feeling whole in months.

It wasn’t healing work, being in survival mode, or reaching for dreams that didn’t feel like hers. It was just being here. Among them. Moving through a space where she was needed and known. Where her name didn’t echo strange.

This was the weight of belonging. Like her breath could stay steady for a while.

Near the stage, a stray guitar note caught her ear. 

Sammie sat with his head bent over the strings, tuning by feel.

Each pluck was soft, testing. Searching for the right place to land.

Beside him, Delta Slim pressed a slow run of chords from the piano. Low, syrupy notes that grounded Sammie’s sharper thread. The two sounds tangled together, unfinished and not yet a song, but just shy of becoming one.

The music followed her through the room like a trail. 

It moved through her chest before it reached her ears. A pull deep enough to press on whatever had come undone that afternoon by Sammie’s house.

Now, even this warm, flickering space, it felt like the air shifted around him. Like he carried something ancient in his hands, and the strings were just the method of choice it let itself speak through.

The pull of the music felt like dangerous territory, the sound tunneling her focus. Mitena’s breath caught for a half a second.

A voice cut through it, low, sharp, and steady. Loud enough to bend Mitena's attention.

“Tables need movin’,” Stack said to one of the hired hands nearest to the crates. 

He moved as he spoke, already cutting across the floor. His hat came off with a causal flick, landing clean on a hook near the bar without him breaking stride. 

He hadn’t directed the order to her, but she stepped in anyway, dragging a few stools into place just to keep her hands moving.

Stack’s brow lifted at her movement. She wasn’t trying to prove anything, but just couldn’t stomach standing idle while everyone else had purpose. 

She was reaching for another when Smoke’s voice cut in behind her. 

“Hey. C’mere a sec,” he muttered, already half-turned toward the stage.

He didn’t wait for a reply, disappearing past the edge of the bar and deeper into the shadows. 

Mitena followed.

Her boots made little sound across the uneven boards, weaving past crates of liquor, Irish beer, Italian wine, the kind folks whispered the twins had hauled from Chicago, and towers of unopened glassware.

The light thinned the farther they walked, and the noise, too.

Out here, the edge of the juke joint felt like it still remembered it had once been a sawmill.

The air in the corridor felt like it didn’t move, but watched. Only one bulb, recently installed, lit the narrow back hall, casting long shadows down the walls and floors.

Smoke stood near the door of a room tucked in the corner.

“This that storage room that’s yours for the night,” he said. “Still got that key I gave ya from earlier?”

Mitena nodded. It was tucked deep in her skirt pocket, the metal’s warmth seeping through the fabric.

“Good. Someone stashed a bucket of rags and God knows what in there. Grab those and whatever you need to make the room not smell like unwashed ass and piss,” he muttered, already turning back toward the light. “Don’t want folks passin’ out from the stink before they even get patched up.”

He walked away before she could give an answer.

Mitena scoffed under her breath. Sure thing, dick.

She adjusted the strap on her medic bag and moved to the front of the door. The key slid easily into the lock, but the door groaned like it didn’t want to let her in. 

Inside, the room greeted her like breath gone stale. Dust crawled along the floor like it had a mind of its own.

A single bulb hung overhead in the small space, the light barely held with its weak yellow glow. With no windows to let any light in, shadow shrouded most of the room. 

A broken chair sagged in the far corner. A metal basin sat dented beneath a self.

The bucket with rags was right where she’d expected it’d be—right on the grimy floor, damp and reeking of mold and old tobacco. She toed it once, grimaced, then nudged it toward the back wall and set her bag down beside it. 

When she shut the door behind her, it creaked loud enough to startle her, the sounds of the juke joint vanishing with it, swallowing her whole.

That’s when the cold found her.

Her skin prickled, and she knew something had turned. Not the light, or the air, but the intention of the room.

A presence. 

Pressed close behind her like a second spine. The unmistakable sense of something not alive, yet still lingering.

She spun fast, sharp enough to make her dizzy for a moment, but there was nothing. No one.

Only shadows stretched too far, and the quiet around her all wrong.

Her throat tightened. The air was too thick now. What had smelled of damp wood and mold had soured.

Now it reeked. Copper, the acid stench of meat gone bad, and the tang of blood spilled and never scrubbed away.

Death had settled here once. 

And it hadn’t been allowed to leave.

Mitena knew this not just in instinct, but in practice. The way death marked a space. The way it lingered. She’d seen it in hospital corners and trailers back on the rez, where death came soft, but stayed loud.

She took a careful step backward. Then another. Her eyes locked on the dark ahead.

One hand fumbled low, downward, reaching blindly toward where her med bag sat on the floor.

Her palm brushed nothing but the stale air. She swept wider, fingers splayed, scrambling for the shape of a handle, a zipper, anything familiar. Anything grounding.

Instead, her heel clipped the bucket behind her.

It dragged an inch across the floor with a sharp, metallic screech that cut the silence open.

Mitena flinched. Her knees dipped instinctively as she dropped down, hand flying to the bucket’s rim. 

Cold and slimy. Mildew slicked along her fingers.

The damp clung to her skin. 

She stayed crouched, every muscle coiled, her eyes locked on the back wall where the shadows seemed to thicken. The silence around her changed, not in volume but in shape. What once felt like emptiness now pressed in from every side, the stillness gathering weight as if the very air had grown watchful.

Her breath shallowed, drawn thin and slow.

The repressive silence didn’t last. It started with a creak. A creak of wood, not the kind a room makes to settle, but a single deliberate groan of wood. Drawn out just to her left, where she hadn’t dared to look.

It landed heavy, like a step placed with intention.

Mitena didn’t move at first. She turned her head enough to let the edge of her vision stretch toward the noise, watching the darkness tilt in its corners.

The bulb above flickered twice, sputtering like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to stay lit. The air, too, seemed to flicker, thinning, retreating from the corners like it didn’t want to touch what lingered there.

She rose slowly, pushing the bucket aside, hands braced against her thighs, not because she felt brave but because staying crouched too long made the fear worse. As if something beneath the floor might reach up.

Mitena turned toward the noise, slowly, every inch braced. Her heart pounded so loud it filled her ears.

Just crates. Stacked three high in the far corner. 

There was nothing there.

One of them must’ve settled in place, wood against wood. That’s all it was. She exhaled, a little too loud. 

A little too soon.

The light flickered again, then came the sound.

Not like the settling of wood, or the creaking of it, but a drag. Soft and deliberate.

Like fingertips trailing the length of the rotting floorboards.

Mitena’s throat closed. Her gut screamed not to turn. Yet, her body moved anyway, slow as breath and pulled by an instinct she didn’t recognize.

At first, there was only shadow. A part of the room the light didn’t touch.

It was too dense. Too still.

From the dark, a shape pressed forward. Not all at once, but in layers. Like dye bleeding through fabric. Shape bleeding through the dark.

First the slant of a shoulder. Then the slack hang of arms. 

Limbs.

A neck too long.

A head tilted wrong.

A man—

No.

What was left of one.

Hung from the beam near the rafters, rope sunk deep into the soft meat of his throat. His body bloated, skin grayed and swollen in patches. Eyes bulged wide and unblinking.

Coily hair matted and torn in patches.

Unmoving, yet fixed in her direction.

Not swinging, nor swaying, but just watching.

Mitena’s mouth opened, but the sound got stuck. Crowding in her throat, and pressing up all at once, where it held. 

She couldn’t even breathe.

Yet, she was able to blink hard, once. Though he remained.

In the shadows behind, more bodies pulled themselves upward.

Crawling first.

Then dragging.

Their bodies peeled from the floor like they’d been there all along, and straightened in jagged postures. A crooked assembly of heights.

Charred flesh, torn mouths, and fingers bent in wrong directions.

One woman’s jaw was missing entirely, just an open cavern of skin, appearing as if frozen in mid-scream. Another had her hands still bound in front of her with rope that ended in nothing. A third moved in jerks, one leg scraping behind him, leaving a dark streak with every step.

Their eyes didn’t resemble eyes at all, just milky white, stretched wide, and peeled open like they’d never been allowed to close.

One man at the front had no eyes at all. Just empty, scooped hollows, glistening as if freshly carved. Still, his face was tilted toward Mitena.

Together as if on cue, they moved forward.

Every motion too sharp, too deliberate, wrong in its perfection. 

The kind of movement that shouldn’t come from limbs that slow, so ruined.

Not a charge, but as if some unseen conductor had lifted his hand in and brought them into synchronization.

A twisted choreography driven not by choice, but force.

Mitena couldn’t move or scream from the nightmare looming just steps from her. Even the thought of breath was gone.

They took another step.

Closer now, the light caught them differently, or maybe the light finally showed what had always been there.

Not just wounds, but patterns. She knew the way skin split when it blistered, the way rope chewed into wrists, when limbs were purposely hacked off. These weren’t random deaths. 

They were executions.

Death by hatred made flesh again. Like the Impa Shilup the elders refused to even mention aloud.

Their bodies bore every mark of hate. 

Chained necks. Missing hands. Flesh that never healed right.

Slaughtered. Discarded. Returned. 

Mitena’s knees faltered. The floor tilted, or maybe it was just her.

She stumbled back, back striking the wall, yet it did nothing to steady her.

The room was heavier now, the air too thick to swallow, light too thin to point out what was coming.

And the figures kept coming.

They moved. Together.

Behind them, the light seemed to retreat, shrouding the figures in partial darkness. 

Then, the sound rose.

A moan. Though not from any one mouth.

It came from the floorboards. The rafters. The walls. Like too many breaths exhaled at once.

Voices croaking, rasping “Pulled you wrong.”

Then more, closer, right beside her ear, “You don’t belong, girl.”

Mitena spun toward the voices, but there was nothing behind her. Just the wall and that wrong silence.

She whipped back toward the others.

From the blur of shadows, one began to take form. Taller, darker, commanding the space around it.

No longer distant, now it stood in front of her. 

Close enough for her to feel the rot in its breath.

Its shadow falling over hers. It loomed so tall she strained her neck upward, searching for its gaze.

What stared back was not anything her mind could name. A body dressed in the shape of a man, yet twisted so wrong it defied recognition.

Its face was inches from hers, skin warped and hanging loose like ribbons. 

Taller than any man she’d known, its scalp was patchy with burned curls and exposed flesh, and strands clinging in wet clumps.

The jaw sagged wide, unhinged, teeth shattered and gums blackened. Tattered remains of a white blouse clung to its shoulders, shredded trousers hanging in strips around bone and decay. Sheets of skin peeled from its arms like bark stripped from a tree. In the hollow of its chest, ribs jutted outward, broken as though something had forced its way through from the inside.

It didn’t move closer.

It only waited.

Behind it, the other bodies froze mid-step in deference, as though this one decided for all of them.

Mitena’s knees locked, her breath scraping raw in her throat, her heart stuttering for all to hear. The figure tilted its head with a slow, deliberate crack, watching her the way a predator weighs silence before the strike.

It lifted one hand, mostly bone, and clawed with the splintered ends of nails. It extended not to grab, but to point.

Toward the dark corner behind her.

The bony finger trembled, fixed on the corner.

Mitena felt the weight of it more than she saw it. A command, silent but undeniable. Her skin crawled with the knowledge that whatever waited there was worse than what already stood before her.

The others began to fade, not completely vanishing but thinning, dissolving into the beams, the floor, the very air that carried their stench.

Still, the tall figure remained, eyes locked on her, hand never wavering. 

Waiting on her to obey, as the corner continued to darken, light shrinking from the space as if being swallowed whole.

The dread in the air tugged at her spine, turning her whether she wanted to or not. 

The figure’s hand stayed raised, steady as stone, demanding.

Before she could breathe, the body began to fail. Skin sagged, joints cracking as its shape folded inward, eaten by something she couldn’t see. The smell hit next, iron and taint thick enough to sting her throat. She could only watch as it sank in on itself, bones softening, the last of its silhouette slumping into the floor like wax under heat.

Silence followed.

From behind her, the boards groaned.

A drag. A pull. Wet and slow, clawing its way up from underneath. The sound crept up her spine, wrong in a way that made her knees lock. 

She finally turned. 

The floor split first. Wood groaned, a crack racing across the planks. Walls bowed inward like they couldn’t hold what pressed against them. From the dark beneath, a sound surged. Wet, heavy, and dragging its way up. 

At first, it wasn’t a body at all but a smear pulling itself upright. Limbs too long. A spine that clicked and snapped as it straightened. 

When its face, if it could be called that, came into view, red glistened where features should have been. 

No eyes, no mouth, just the torn skin stretched thin over bone, as if it had been worn too long and now wanted free.

Mitena’s stomach lurched. Her boots felt fused to the boards. She tried to wrench free, but her boots wouldn’t budge, as if the floor itself had turned molten and cooled around her feet. She yanked harder, panic sparking, but the boards held fast.

Then it breathed. A sound that sank past her ears, vibrating through her ribs until her chest ached.

It moved, not walking, but pulsing forward in jagged bursts. Its shoulders cracked into place. Arms jerked, curious and clumsy, as though learning how to exist.

Its head rolled too far to the side, neck bending past what bone should allow. With a violent jerk its head snapped upright, as if some unseen hand had yanked it back into place, and now pointed right at her.

She was able to stumble back, her foot catching the tin bucket she’d shoved aside earlier. It toppled, clattering across the floor in a sharp metallic burst. 

The noise cracked through the silence like a gunshot.

The creature flinched, the noise jolted through it. Too many joints seemed to answer at once—shoulders, knees, and the spine bending in directions that made no sense, each angle wrong in a different way.

The bucket rattled again where it had rolled, and for a moment, the creature’s attention faltered. Its body hunched, recoiling or anticipating, as if the sound had teeth.

Mitena’s pulse hammered, a thin thread of hope, of connection, flickered through the terror. 

Her eyes darted to the pail, now lying sideways in the dark. 

If I can get to it again, if I can—

The beast twitched toward her in a series of sharp, jerking motions, its ribcage stretching against skin that looked ready to tear. The sound of her breath seemed to draw it closer.

Stillness snapped, violent and absolute, and it was on her. 

It lunged, limbs snapping forward at angles too fast, too anatomically incorrect, its bulk rushing all at once.

Mitena dove sideways, boots skidding on warped planks. Her shoulder slammed the wall, hand clawing for balance. Splinters carved a deep line across her palm, and she bit down hard against the cry that threatened to break out.

Behind her, the creature crashed into the spot she’d just been. The wall shrieked under the blow. A beam nearby split with a crack that rattled the rafters, showering her with dust.

It wheeled back, determined, body folding in grotesque arcs. Its eyeless face turned toward her, tracking with a surety that made her stomach lurch. As if it was sniffing, listening, tracking.

Hunting.

Mitena’s gaze darted toward the bucket, still too far. Her cut throbbed, every breath burned, and the thing kept coming, sure as a hound on a scent.

“Of course.” She scoffed. “Fucking perfect.” The words scraped out before she could stop them. Not from defiance, or bravery, but the only words left to say when the world kept stacking the odds against her.

The creature shivered, its distorted humanoid frame quivering with sick delight, as though her misery was a flavor it had been starving for. Its jaw sagged wider, skin twitching, savoring the sound.

A wet rattle seeped from its chest, neither laugh nor growl, more like the gargle of water through clogged pipes. It leaned closer, wearing the shape of a man like a cruel joke, its approach mocking.

The floor shuddered as it moved, wood straining like it shouldn’t hold.

Mitena’s teeth clenched against the pressure that clawed behind her eyes and split through her head. The creature lurched closer, breathless and reeking, closing the gap until it loomed just in front of her. Its ribs like broken scaffolding, so pointed she swore her fingertip could skim the ridges and tear the paper-thin flesh that stretched over them. Shadow spilled over her boots, swallowing her into its outline.

She should’ve moved, run, something, but her body refused. Not from fear alone, but the thing held her without touching. Its presence poured into her, vision flooding her skull until every muscle locked. 

Its jaw sagged wider, and a gush of rot-heavy breath rolled over her face. The stench burned her throat raw, and with it came a pressure that pressed behind her eyes, seizing her sight.

Her body no longer answered to her, every nerve pinned still, while her sight bent to what it wanted her to see.

This vision struck hot behind her eyes, not like her usual sight, but forced in. The images shoved through her skull as if the creature had reached inside and turned her gaze for its own purpose, toward a scene she didn’t choose to witness. 

Shapes flickered across her vision, stitching themselves into form before she could shut her eyes. Her sight bent, overlaying the room with a scene she hadn’t chosen, as figures built themselves from shadow and demand.

A man.

A woman.

Figures wavered in and out, outlines stitched from dust and haze, shifting like they couldn’t decide if they belonged. At first only blurred edges, smudges of motion, then sharpe, limbs, fabric, faces.

The woman straddled the man, plum satin clinging to her hips like poured wine. His laugh broke in shallow bursts against her shoulder, his hands clamping her waist to pull her down harder. Both desperate to forget something.

Color drained from Mitena’s face, leaving her skin clammy and cold.

The closeness of it, the heat of their movements, pressed into her like she was in the room with them, not just watching.

The woman’s mouth lingered too long at his throat. Her exposed pale shoulders flexed with each roll of her hips, a thin shawl slipping down her arms. Short curls framed her face in softness, but her mouth stayed fastened at his neck.

The press of her mouth carried want, insistent and unyielding. A devotion that pressed harder than intimacy should. A faint gleam caught as her mouth shifted, teeth flashing quick in profile. 

The air around them sharpened, and what had felt like longing edged into hunger.

Her hands spread flat across his chest, holding him there with force disguised as intimacy. The man’s chuckle broke into a gasp, hips jerking once before locking stiff. 

Blood sprayed in a hot arc, streaking the woman’s gown, her hair, her lips. She didn’t flinch, but drank in violence like it had always been the goal.

His limbs convulsed, then stilled. His head sagged, eyes blown wide and unseeing. 

Through the blur of satin and blood, past the curve of the woman’s shoulders, the man’s face came into view.

Stack.

Mitena choked. The name rang in her skull like a struck bell, disbelief crashing against the certainty of what she clearly saw. She shook her head hard, willing the image to tear apart, to scatter. 

For a heartbeat, she swore the hold loosened, the scene flickering like it might finally let her go.

But the vision only clamped tighter. The creature burrowed into her skull, gnawing through thought and marrow, writhing in her brain until her defiance rotted into fuel. Her eyes snapped back to the vision, forced wide by the pressure crawling through her head.

The woman lifted her head at last, jaw slick, mouth curling in a smile too sharp for easiness she attempted to display. Her eyes didn’t look back to Stack, but they locked past him, into Mitena’s. A gaze that shouldn’t have reached her. Yet pinned her where she stood, as if the vision itself knew she was watching.

The vision cracked at the edges, bleeding away until the sawmill forced itself back into view, but the earlier pressure didn’t lift with it.

Her skull throbbed, her eyes still burning from what they’d been forced to hold. When her sight cleared, the creature filled it, jaw unhinged, breath rattling wet and close, as if it had been waiting for her to come back.

It leaned in, the stench of it flooding her senses, crawling down her throat until it felt like she was drowning in it. Its mouth worked open, a gargle rising deep in its chest. No words came out.

The room answered instead.

The beams groaned. The floorboards clicked in stuttered rhythm. Wet sounds ticked in the walls, like the sawmill itself had found a voice. 

“Not meant to be here.”

“He pulled you wrong.”

“Opened what should’ve stayed shut.”

The noise came from everywhere at once, each rasp carrying grief and malice that pressed in until the air itself shook.

The creature bent closer, ribs swelling with each heave, its ruined face inches from hers.

“The place between,” the walls hissed. “Smell it on you.”

The thing’s throat convulsed, dragging up a noise so broken it might have been a laugh if it could spoil. The scrape of ruined lungs clawed through the silence until her skin prickled. 

Its voice seeped out at last, syrupy and wrong, almost sing-song.

“Weee can touch you nowww.”

Mitena’s face twisted, eyes wide and unblinking, her jaw clenched so hard it ached. Every breath becoming labored, shallow, and useless against the heaviness bearing down on her.

Her chest seized, every nerve locked in place, until the pressure around skull shuddered. The creature’s voice lingered like decay in her ears, but its hold wavered for a breath, as though the effort of speaking had loosened its grip on her.

She seized it, staggering back, boots skidding across the floorboard. Air rushed into her lungs sharp and sour. Yet, the thing followed, drawn forward on its twisted limbs, and endless tide of death and hunger.

Mitena’s shoulders struck the wall, and beside her—the door. Her hand flew for the knob, grasping nothing but splinters. No seam. No handle. 

The wood sealed tight as if the room itself had turned against her.

The creature loomed closer, its mass eclipsing her as its ruined mouth split wide. The sound that followed was almost tender, gloating, dripping in the joy and stench of her terror.

From the walls, the beams, the floor beneath her boots, a chant began. Off-kilter, overlapping. A chorus in pieces. 

“Death knows your name. Death knows your name. Knows your name. Death knows. Knows your name. Death. Knows you.”

The whispers careened over each other, building into a broken litany that pressed into her mind until her vision blurred.

Her chest hollowed with the certainty of it. This was how it ended, split open beneath a thing that fed on her breaking. Its claws snapped up, the strike sharp and eager, rushing for her and savoring her ruin. She felt herself buckle, and for a heartbeat, the thought of release almost felt easier than fighting.

The creature leaned in further, like it would be the final time. 

No. Her teeth ground together, eyes clenched in defiance. Not like this. I ain’t yours to take.

Overhead, the beams murmured in long release, the walls seeming to ease with it, carrying a shift she hadn’t felt since stepping into the room. 

Rot thinned from the air. The weight pressing against her ribs and skull peeled back, coolness unfurling in its place.

The monster froze. Its claw still hung above her, though trembling and uncertain. Its head jerked sideways as if scenting something it couldn’t name, something to be feared.

Around them, space turned. A pressure, or presence, easing outward as if the room had exhaled. 

Cedar and rosewater. The air carried it in thin ribbons, curling into Mitena’s lungs until her chest ached with recognition.

Her.

The presence pressed closer, a weight Mitena knew in her bones before her eyes caught up. It steadied the room in ways she couldn’t name, unmaking the suffocating dark.

Hushi.

She arrived through the seams of the room without sound or spectacle, steady as she had always been. Shadows thinned, and the dimness gave way to shades lighter than before.

The creature wavered. Its raised claw hung midair, quivering, its ruined jaw clicking as if caught between strike and retreat. It twisted, sensing the new arrival, but its body recoiled like the very air had burned it.

Mitena’s chest heaved, though not with panic this time. Her spine loosened, pulling straighter, even as her legs stayed rooted. The scent of her grandmother brushed her with a pang so deep it nearly broke her open.

Finally, Hushi took her place beside her granddaughter, firm and unshaking. She did not look at Mitena, only forward, her shoulders squared, her stance sharp with authority. She stood as if she had been carved into the space, immovable, a wall between Mitena and the thing.

The creature’s voice tore ragged from its throat, a panic edging into ruined cadence. 

“No—no, no, no!” it gargled, backing toward the far wall. “She burns…she—she burns!”

It scrabbled backward, claws raking at the boards, gouging deep lines as though it could dig its way out through the floor itself. Hushi’s presence blistered against it, a steady burn that the monster could not endure. 

Where she stood, the air sharpened, pressing out like flame without fire, and the creature buckled under it.

Its limbs thrashed out of rhythm, jerking wild with panic. The body that had moved too clean, too precisely before through jerks and twitches, now unraveled into chaos. Tendons strained, split, then tore free. Chunks of flesh sagged and fell, liquefying into wet heaps that hissed once it hit the floorboards.

Steam rolled up in thick waves, carrying the stench of putrefaction until the air itself burned to breath.

Mitena gagged, choking hard, her throat raw as she coughed against the rising fumes. Tears stung her eyes, blurring her sight of the creature as it spasmed and caved in on itself.

Hushi didn’t move. She watched it fall to pieces with a detachment that made her presence feel heavier and sharper. 

The last of the form sloughed into a heap, twitching once before it stilled. Steam boiled off the mess, carrying a reek of death until it seemed the whole room breathed decay. 

Mitena passed the back of her hand to her mouth, coughing into it, lungs clawing for air. Her knees buckled, her body folding until she crouched small against the wall. Every nerve trembled, yet beside her Hushi stood untouched, as if the air bent around her and spared her from the choking stench.

She stayed hunched, arms curled around her shins, shaking too hard to wipe the tears stinging her eyes. The stench still burned her throat, but another scent threaded through it, reminding—cedar and rosewater.

Slowly, disbelieving, she lifted her gaze.

Standing as she had on the day they laid her to rest, hair neatly coiled, velvet cream dress clean and unwrinkled, her favorite brooch pinned at the collar. Though her shoulders were strong, her skin flushed with youth Mitena’s memory had never given her. Eyes dark, cunning, and unbroken.

She was a wonder to behold.

Mitena’s lips parted, the word escaping as little more than a scared whisper. Her pulse thundered so loud it drowned her thoughts.

“...Nana?”

Hushi didn’t answer at first. She stepped forward, gaze still fixed on the steaming ruin until it sagged into nothing but a blackened smear. Only then did her eyes turn, settling on her granddaughter.

Hushi bent, lowering herself until her sharp gaze was level with Mitena’s. She was stronger now, her stare carried the weight of someone who had lived through fire and refused to yield. 

At last, her familiar twang came. Words low and certain, each word deliberate. 

“Listen quick, child, I ain’t got much time.” 

Mitena’s mouth opened, but no sound formed. The questions spun too fast to catch.

Hushi’s hand lifted, palm steady. “You’re walkin’ with death hangin’ on ya now.”

“I—I don’t understand, Nana,” Mitena gasped, voice catching in the back of her throat. “How are you here? How—how is any of this real? What was that?”

Her fists curled against her knees. 

“Why did it attack me? Did I die? Is—is this hell?” She asked, eyes darting. The questions tumbled too fast, each word scraping out of her throat. She couldn’t stop them, couldn’t even look at her grandmother’s face, the face that she had expected to never see again after she buried her.

Hushi didn’t answer right away. Her silence pressed heavier than words, her gaze steady, pity cutting faintly across her features.

Mitena’s curls shook as she kept going, voice cracking under its own weight. “How am I even here, Nana? None of this makes sense. One moment I was—” her breath hitched, “—and now I’m stuck in nineteen fucking thirty-two. Is all this happenin’ ‘cause I don’t belong here? Is this my fault somehow?”

Hushi stayed rooted, steady as stone. Her hands rested over Mitena’s fists, holding them firm when Mitena couldn’t hold herself together.

“Mit,” she said, quiet but cutting through the tremor, “this ain’t you. Don’t go carryin’ blame that ain’t yours to lift.”

Mitena shuddered, but the words still clawed out. “Then why me? Why now?” Her eyes searched Hushi’s face, desperate, as if the right answer might be written in the lines of her face.

Hushi’s face didn’t falter. Her thumb traced slow circles over Mitena’s knuckles, the same way she had when Mitena was a child, restless with nightmares and her father’s disappearance. 

“Some things break open from grief,” she stated. “Others from blood. Either way, it don’t mean you asked for it.”

Mitena huffed a bitter laugh, frustration spiking through the fear, words tumbling sharp. “You don’t talk like that,” she said, shaking her head hard. “All this cryptic, spooky bullshit—” Her voice cracked. “For God’s sake, where’s the Hushi who once told the preacher’s wife her peach cobbler tasted like ass? That’s my Nana, plainspoken, no riddles. I don’t…”

Her eyes wandered beyond Hushi, to the darkened space of the room to the steaming mush of what remained from the creature. She pressed her palms to her eyes, trying to catch her breath, but the sob still broke loose, rough and small. “I don’t understand any of this.”

A quiet passed between them. Then, softly, “...Well,” Hushi said, a faint twitch in her mouth, “that cobbler did taste like ass.”

Mitena’s breath hitched. The laugh that came out wasn’t really a laugh at all, just a cracked sound between crying and relief.

Hushi’s mouth softened, though her posture stayed firm. She reached out, brushing a curl from Mitena’s damp cheek, the gesture familiar enough to sting. “Ain’t gotta understand it all right now,” she said quietly. “Just breathe, baby.”

Mitena shook her head, shoulders trembling. “I just…” The words barely formed. “I just want to go home. I miss you. So much.”

For a beat, her grandmother said nothing. Only the faint scent of rosewater shifted between them. When Hushi finally spoke she exhaled, slow and pained. 

“If I could send you back, I would.” She paused, eyes on Mitena. “But the home you’re talkin’ about, it ain’t there no more. Not the way it was before. You can’t go back.”

Mitena exhaled sharply, her breath catching halfway. “Well, damn.” she said at last, the faintest laugh twisting through disbelief. “Course it can’t ever be simple.”

Hushi’s mouth curved, a smile more akin to sympathy. “Simple ain’t never been our way,” she murmured. “You know that.”

Mitena rubbed her palms against her skirt, trying to steady the tremor in her hands. “Then tell me what’s happenin’, Nana,” she said quietly. “Why am I here? Why any of this—how are you here?”

Without another word, Hushi reached down and clasped her granddaughter’s hands, pulling her up. The touch was reassuring, warm, and left Mitena standing eye to eye with her, breathless and uncertain.

Her tone stayed even, though her eyes had softened. “It wasn’t the wind that carried you, baby,” she said quietly. “I didn’t come on my own, and you didn’t either. Somethin’ pulled you across. Somethin’ wanted you here.”

Mitena’s brow knit, “Pulled? By what?”

Her grandmother’s gaze shifted past her, like she could see farther than the walls allowed. “That boy,” she said ultimately. “He sang a song near your bones. One of them gifted ones. Didn't know what he was callin’ up, but it cracked somethin’ open…and let me through.”

Mitena blinked, confusion snagging on the edges of understanding. “S-Sammie?” The name left her mouth unsure. Her thoughts scattered, chasing the memory of that voice, of the day, the way it carried, and how the air had changed around her even before she knew why.

“You were callin’ me that day,” Hushi said softly. “I jus’ followed the sound.”

The words settled heavy between them, carrying more than words of comfort. 

Mitena’s pulse thudded against her throat. “Then if you’re here ‘cause of me,” she said, voice trembling, “Why am I here?”

Hushi hesitated, her thumb brushing absently over Mitena’s knuckles like she was steadying her before speaking. “Because somethin’ went pullin’ where it shouldn’t,” she said at last. “And when it did…it tore somethin’ loose.”

Mitena frowned. “Loose?”

“Between what’s living and what’s gone,” Hushi murmured. “That kind of pull don’t come clean. You were caught in it. Dragged through with it.”

Her stomach turned, the word tear sinking like a mass in her chest. “A tear?” she echoed. “That don’t sound good.”

Hushi grimaced, and nodded once. “That’s why the ones caught between, the dead and things that should’ve stayed buried, can reach for you now. Why I can, too.” Her voice deepened, carrying the heaviness of warning.

“You don’t just feel death no more, baby. It feels you back. And the ones that died bitter, violent, they don’t come gentle. They smell that tear on you, and they want in.”

Mitena’s jaw clenched. “Want in where?”

Something in Hushi’s stillness shifted. “In you,” she said. “Through you. That tear’s like a door, and it don’t close easy. Whatever pulled you here didn’t stitch it shut, and it left it open. Left you open and marked. And that mark is what’s letting things find you. Draws the ones who ain’t supposed to cross back over.”

The question broke from her before she could hold it back. ”Why me, Nana? Why now?” 

Mitena’s question met only silence.

Hushi’s mouth pressed into a thin line, not from reluctance, but from the weight of what she couldn’t say.

Her gaze drifted to the edges of the room, as if the walls themselves were listening. Telling her something. A flicker of frustration, of resistance, passed through her features.

She grit her teeth, jaw tight. “I’d tell you if I could,” she said finally. “But some answers don’t come from this side. Things I’m not allowed to say. Not in this shape.”

Her voice dropped, burdened. “Jus’ know this, baby. Something cracked the veil for you,” Hushi murmured. “And whatever did it—it knew your soul. Wanted it back bad enough to bleed for it. Mess up the order of things.”

Mitena stiffened, incredulity cutting through the fatigue. “Back?” she said, sharper now. “You can’t just say that and stop there, Nana.”

Hushi’s mouth moved like she might answer, but something in the room pulled at the edges of her form. Her outline shimmered, softening like steam.

So she offered what she could. 

“They ain’t all ghosts, Mit,” she said, voice low and tight. “Some of the one’s sniffin’ after ya still got bodies. Still got hunger.”

Mitena’s eyes widened, throat gone dry. She thought back to Jesse, to Stack’s attacker, to things that didn’t make sense in the moment they happened.

Creatures that looked human, but weren’t.

Blood.

Her breath caught. 

No.

Not ghosts. Not just ghosts.

Hushi’s form wavered, her edges thinning like mist drawn to wind. Still, her voice reached through the quiet. “There’s someone I thought the earth had taken,” Hushi said. “But they’re still walkin’ under the same sky as you. Carryin’ a weight that’ll break or build ‘em. Before the night’s through, they’ll have to choose if they’ll honor their oath…or their heart.”

Her words lingered in the air, and the shimmer around her deepened, blurring her edges as her signature scent thickened again. Her mouth parted as if she meant to say more, but the sound never came.

Hushi was already fading.

She reached forward like she might hold Mitena’s face again, but her hand passed through her. Her eyes softened, mouth parting as if she might offer one last truth.

And then, the door slammed open.

“Mitena!”

Annie’s voice cracked like thunder, breath short and wild.

She looked around the room, frantic. “You alright? What the hell happened—I felt somethin’, nearly knocked me off ma’ feet—”

Mitena turned toward her sharply, stunned, still shaking.

She looked back in front of her.

The stench was gone. The wood still.

No Hushi. No creature’s body. Nothing out of place.

Every trace was gone, like the room had swallowed its own sins.

The breath left her slow. For a moment, she believed it.

That she had imagined it all.

Then, a sharp sting bloomed in her palm.

Mitena winced, and glanced down. She turned her hand over.

A red slash ran along her palm. Thin, fresh, and very much real. 

She stared at it for a long while. 

Long enough for Annie to move beside her. Long enough for the scent of rosewater and cedar to fade. 

She curled her fingers into a fist, and the pain flared. So did the knowing.