If tears could talk, I wondered the words they would form. Maybe a certain name they would spell across his hallway floor.
I didn’t know how long I’d been lying here. At one point, I’d forced myself to stop crying, seeing if by holding back my tears, my heart wouldn’t know it was breaking.
It was no use. I was a lost cause, clutching a book close to my chest as the sun descended into the woods through the window.
A brief sense of serenity had gripped me in sweet, sporadic moments of sleep. Julian was there too. Because he was always everywhere and nowhere … And I hated him for it, for what he did to me. For what he did to us. For not fighting harder.
Where could they have taken him? What could they have done with him? Nothing made sense, and I couldn’t understand why his friends—the only three people who were supposed to understand—beat him naked on his bedroom floor. It broke my fucking heart, and there was nothing I could do.
I found myself crazy—maddened—screaming and crying and shaking and utterly still. Highs and lows and hollows, again, on repeat, all for him. All for a human who couldn’t learn to love himself the way I loved him. One who couldn’t fight back at all.
It took everything—everything—not to rip out every page from the spine of this book he left with me, and instead, I pitched it across the cabin against the wall. I gripped my hair! He didn’t fight. And now I was left, fighting with myself enough for the both of us. All he had done was steal books, though was it worth taking him like that? Would they take his life too? The unknowns were slowly killing me. I knew nothing anymore. Then after another insane spell, I fell into stillness once again.
Time had passed, and the front door to the cabin creaked open.
I didn’t bother lifting my head to look, yet the footsteps grew nearer, louder. A hand lay over my shoulder.
“Fallon, what are you doing here?” The voice did not belong to Julian. I no longer cared who it belonged to or what they would do to me. Whoever it was circled me, crouched down. My gaze stayed paralyzed on the same spot where the wall used to be. Only faded denim now. “Why don’t you let me take you home?”
“And where is that? Home?” I whispered, recognizing that it was Jonah. There was a long stretch of silence, a big aching void in the air. I curled deeper into the hardwood floors, if that were at all possible. Jonah rubbed my arm, and I yanked it away. “I want to be here for when he comes back.”
“Julian’s not coming back,” he said, and his words sliced into me. I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing my tears not to believe it. I squeezed my heart, rejecting my heart to receive it. I squeezed my mind, wanting to forget it. “He’s in the cell. In the tunnels.”
“Then I suppose we are both imprisoned in this pain. Good. He deserves it.” I didn’t mean it, but I couldn’t contain my anger either. Julian could have fought against them. At least tried. If not for himself, at least for me.
“Then you would also be pleased to know he will be sentenced to The Wicker Man in seven days. If you honestly mean that, you will come with me and let me take you home so you can be safe. It’s the first day of Samhain and a full moon tonight. You never know what kind of mischief the flatlanders have in store.” He paused, gathered a breath. “Then you can say your goodbyes to the town’s monster when the time comes. He’ll want to see you.”
Monster. He’d said it with distaste as if to test my adoration, to get a rise out of me.
And I whispered, “All men are monsters in some way or another.” I dragged my gaze to his, narrowed my eyes. “If Julian wants to see me, he’ll have to either break out of that cell or haunt me. And if he doesn’t get out, and you happen to see him, tell him I said he’s nothing but a bitch-bitch.” I lowered my gaze. “You’ll have to say bitch twice because he’s being extra weak.”
Jonah waited for quite some time, and without movement from me, he expelled a heavy sigh, slapped his palms against his thighs, and stood. My gaze returned to the same spot on the wooden wall. My heart rate seemed to return to normal, too, as if now that Jonah was gone, Julian was not in the cell. He was only hiding somewhere in the shadows where this town had put him—possibly running in the woods.
In the short distance, I heard the shuffling of a floorboard. Then a click.
Then footfalls. A pause. And a door open. Then close.
Minutes ticked by, and the wind howled through the cracked window casement above the bed where we had slept less than twenty-four hours earlier, wrestling its way into the cabin, into my heart.
A soft cry ebbed and flowed, intertwining with the coming night. A cry that wasn’t my own. I sniffled, rolling my body onto my back then my side to face the sound. Julian’s sheets were still disheveled just as we left them. The hinge of the window moaned as the casement swung slightly.
The cry continued, and I pulled myself onto my feet and walked with caution. It was Samhain, the one time during the entire year where the veil was the thinnest.
My knees hit the edge of the mattress, and I crawled across the bed, peeking out the window, anticipating to see more than trees within the woods.
But that was all there was, and a gust of wind raked through their branches, bending their tips. I clutched the seal of the window, feeling the ethereal cold trapped in this spot. I pulled my hand back, my nerves thundering.
And the cry came again. Below.
I lowered my gaze to see a bone-white ball of fur. “Casper,” I whispered. “Where have you been?”
Casper cried again, and a slice of life sparked inside me. “Hold on, I’m coming.” I shuffled off the bed, grabbed the molding around the door frame, and swung into the hallway toward the back door.
On my way, I paused, staring at the opened book Julian left with me. I bent down and scooped it up before slipping out into the cold behind the house.
One green eye and one blue eye stared at me from the ground beneath Julian’s window. We locked eyes for a moment, and then Casper took off around the cabin.
I was still wearing Julian’s tee and a pair of his plaid pajama pants as my bare feet moved quickly through the woods, muddying the bottoms.
Casper darted south. I was a good fifteen feet behind him and could hear the rising wind whistle through the trees’ branches as we swept through the woods.
It grew colder and colder, and my eyes stayed trained on the powdery-white form leaping over roots and ruts in the ground.
I called out for Casper, but he didn’t slow. He was on a mission. Possibly trying to tell me something, lead me somewhere.
It hadn’t occurred to me until after some time that we were heading in the direction of the funeral home. In the distance, the flicker of flames from torches and candles blanketed the cemetery, townspeople dressed in all white, bathing in the soft yellow moonlight. The trees thinned out around me until canopies turned into the velvety darkness of the night.
Tonight, it seemed as if all the stars had fallen from the sky and were dancing over the graveyard. They were here to celebrate the lives of loved ones stuck on the other side, possibly even be able to visit them on this night. The mere beauty lit a fire inside my chest, and I slowed to a half jog, half walk.
Casper meowed in front of me, steering me to the corner beside the building where it was dark and empty. He circled in place before sitting beside a headstone sitting alone in front of a beech tree. Its branches loomed over me, and my gaze settled over the carved rock that read:
FREYA DELIA GRIMALDI MORGAN
“THE LONE LUNA”
JULY 10th 1968- JULY 1st 1996
BELOVED MOTHER, WIFE, FRIEND
& my moon
“My moon” seemed as if it were carved after the fact, and my eyes glossed over, but I couldn’t blink the tears away. They froze there, in my eyes, blurring the headstone, distorting the words.
I was cold but not shivering. I could hear the townspeople’s hushed voices in the distance, but nothing seemed to sink in. It felt wrong to be standing here, at her grave. She’d died giving me life, and all I’d brought her was death.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you, Fallon.”
The voice was familiar and like a song in the wind. I snapped my head up from the tombstone, and beside the tree stood the woman from a picture I’d seen before.
Her hair was twisted masses of white with eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and not from a picture, but a mirror.
Small differences. My hair was straight, hers wavy. My nose was smaller, pert. Same lips. But it was as if I already knew her, the instant recollection like a dreamy pastime. I was nervous, yet my nerves settled as if remembering where to lay their heads.
My mother was here, standing in front of me. My eyes blinked, and the tears were warm as they slipped down my cheeks.
“Oh, baby, please don’t cry.”
She said baby, and I shook my head as tears tumbled, one chasing the other.
For twenty-four years, I longed to hear my mother’s voice call out to me with any given name. I’d imagined what it would sound like. If I had the kind of mother who would raise her voice when she was mad, sing me to sleep, whisper stories like Marietta used to do, had a musical melody in her laugh. Oh, how I envied all those who had a mom at all, who I’d overhear, complaining about groundings and overprotectiveness and rules and curfews. I’d stood on the sidelines, wishing to trade places with them! Yearning for someone to ground me, to shelter me, to yell at me!
I killed her, and she was calling me baby.
If I wasn’t frozen in place, I feared I’d fall. But she kept her chin up and held my gaze though we both had tears in our eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” I cried as she walked nearer.
“It’s not your fault, Fallon. None of this is your fault.”
“You died because of me.”
She smiled. “You have it all wrong. I died so you could live.”
“I don’t understand.” Another wave of tears washed over my face, and I didn’t want to wipe my eyes, afraid it would wipe away the vision of her. “Gramps died, and it was all my fault,” I told her in case she didn’t already know. “I couldn’t help him. I failed him. And Dad’s dead too. Marietta’s dead, you’re dead. And now … Julian … and I love him. I love him so much that it hurts … and maybe it’s because of me. Because death surrounds me.”
“But that is why I’m here. You must listen to me, Fallon. The birthmark on your skin links you to a bloodline of the moonchildren, a type of witch who originally found power through love and misery. It’s your duty now to keep our magic alive.”
“Magic? I have no magic,” I shook my head, hearing the same story and still unable to believe it, “They tried. Dad’s coven tried to pull it out of me, tried to force me to become one of them. They tried! I’ve been bullied and betrayed and lied to, and no matter how far they push me, there was nothing I could do to stop them. There’s nothing! No magic! I can’t do anything. I’m just a girl.”
“You are not just a girl. And if no one can see that, be your own lover. Moonchildren were never meant to be in a coven because we are our own breed,” she tsked, “Stubborn and wild and unchained. Tell me I’m wrong, Fallon. Tell me you have no interest in guiding the spirits who seek you or wander under the moon’s phases when I know you do. Tell me you’re not insecure yet love intensely, because when we love, it’s rare. But your heart is a wild beast all on its own. A love so fierce and a hate so raw, which is your curse, moonchild. You’re not just a girl, but if you don’t rise up and tell them who it is you are, they will do it for you.”
“The Lone Luna,” I whispered, staring at her.
She understood how it was to be like me. I had so many questions, but she could leave at any moment, and there was not enough time. There had to be a way to break Julian free, and maybe she had all the answers.
I took a step forward with the pressure rising in my chest. “They took Julian, and he’ll die if I can’t do anything to stop it.”
She took a step back, grasped the tree. “There’s something else I came here to tell you.”
“Then tell me. If it’s about Julian, I need to know.”
“The curse of the Hollow Heathens is passed on through our bloodline. As long as we’re living, so is their curse. If anything happens to you before you have a child, our magic will also die. It is your responsibility to make sure you stay alive. You cannot trust anyone.”
“I can trust him,” I assured her. “He loves me, I know he does.”
“Of course, he does. Each and every time,” she whispered, her spirit beginning to falter, fade. Her words weren’t making sense as if she was speaking to herself. Her eyes snapped to mine. “I don’t have time, but remember, Fallon, he may love you, but he will never choose you. He will always choose the coven. Let him go, baby. You must choose yourself. When you find your magic, protect it and pass it on to your daughter as I did. One day, it will be needed.” The tree appeared behind her, and her spirit was slipping with the nighttime breeze.
“You’re wrong,” I told her, panic bubbling inside of me.
“You’ll do what is right, I know you will,” her voice turned into a whisper, and I forced my feet forward to wrap my arms around her, to keep her longer, to convince her. “I love you, Fallon.”
Then she was gone, her afterword like mist in her wake as I clasped onto air, my arms holding nothing. I stumbled forward until my palms hit the tree, breaking my fall. I whipped my head to my left, to my right, behind me, searching for her. But she was gone, and she wasn’t coming back.
Casper cried, arching his spine and rubbing against my leg, letting me know he was still here. I wrapped my arms around my waist with Julian’s book tucked inside, wishing her visit would have given me more answers than questions.
Freya couldn’t know Julian as I knew him. When I’d needed words of comfort, of support, she’d only told me everything I never wanted to hear of him, of how the rest of the town viewed him.
My thoughts ran and ran and ran, not making sense in my head. She had spoken of the curse and how it was tied to our bloodline. That I must stay alive.
Was this why Carrie Driscoll wanted me dead?
Though the cold was stinging my feet, my ears, my nose, my insides were numb to the sensations.
Had Julian known this?
I kept my head down, staring at the graves my feet passed as I walked through the cemetery, replaying the last few days.
Julian had acted alone without the other Heathens, stealing the books, destroying the books. The only possible conclusion was that Julian did know how to break the curse, and he’d done all this to make sure no one else did.
Julian was trying to protect me.
I didn’t know whether to walk back to Julian’s or Gramps’. Without a sense of direction, I stumbled across a bench in the cemetery and lay my head down. Soft glows from the candles and torches swayed in the distance, the town finding spots and laying out blankets to spend the night in the cemetery to be rejoined with their loved ones.
Julian Blackwell was in a cell. He went against everyone to protect me.
“Oh, Fallon,” a familiar voice filled the cold air. “You’re shivering,” it said. I knew there was a hand caressing my skin, but I made no effort to move. “You’ll get yourself sick if you stay out here all night without a coat.”
“He’s an asshole,” I think I cried out, and I only knew I was crying again because I tasted the salt upon my lips. I was on my feet now, staring into soft brown eyes. “I hate him, Kioni. I want to kill him myself for this. Who does he think he is? Thinking he could be some kind of hero?” Air pushed out between my lips, and I shook my head, “So that’s what this is?”—I nodded, trying to sort through my thoughts—“He thinks he can die and leave me like this. He’s selfish, and I won’t have it. And she’s wrong, you know.” I snapped my eyes to Kioni, who had her fingers clutching my arm, pulling me toward a car.
“Who’s wrong?”
I huffed. “My mother.” Kioni’s brows spiked. “That’s right, I talked to the Lone Luna. Not all that’s cracked up to be either.”
“You’re talking nonsense right now. You don’t mean that.”
“I mean every word.” I turned and screamed into the air. “You hear that, Mother? You don’t know anything!”
“Fallon, you’ve officially lost your mind, now get in the car.” She opened the door and may as well have pushed me into the passenger seat. Then shut the door.
It seemed like forever in this stagnant silence until the driver’s side opened, and Kioni slid into the driver seat beside me. She rubbed her hands together, blew hot air into her palms. “Okay, now let’s just hope I don’t kill us on the way to Benny’s.”
“What are you doing here, anyway?” I asked, digging my fingers into the book and looking out through the windshield, but images of Julian being locked and alone inside the tunnels consumed my mind.
“Because, unfortunately for me right now, I’m your keeper, and I have to make sure you don’t do anything stupid.”
My laugh was empty. “Of course, you are.”
Kioni faced me as we lay there in the dark in my bedroom. She hadn’t left my side. Even forced me to stand inside the bathroom with her. I hadn’t changed out of Julian’s clothes. I hadn’t set the book down.
Casper had returned to the house and curled into a ball atop the blanket over my feet. Kioni’s eyes were closed, but I knew she was awake. “I have to die for the curse to be broken?” I asked aloud. “That’s what Freya told me. That the only way to break the curse for the Hollow Heathens is for me to die.”
“It’s true,” Kioni whispered, not opening her eyes. “If Norse Woods finds out, they will kill you. If Sacred Sea finds out, they will use it against Norse Woods. Your dad, Marietta, Benny, me, one of us would have eventually told you … once or if you got pregnant. But then everyone started dying … There’s something about knowing the truth that could be dangerous before then.”
“A burden.”
“Exactly.”
“I wouldn’t want my baby to have to go through this.”
“Exactly,” Kioni said again. “Then maybe you would have avoided getting pregnant or falling in love period. Or on the flip side, you could have lived here and found a hatred toward Norse Woods for something and told Sacred Sea the secret. It could have worked either way, and there is no reason for the moon girl to know until she’s pregnant. That way, every decision you made was because you wanted to make it. Not because of the curse.”
“The books Julian stole … they were in Sacred Sea possession. You think they knew this whole time?”
A sigh fell from her lips. “No, even the books are cryptic. The Cantinis know, yes, but they are the Keepers of Secrets. Sacred Sea should have never had the books to begin with, and Viola Cantini would never reveal a secret to anyone, not even her coven.”
“So, Julian’s in a cell because he stole books from a coven who should have never had them in the first place.”
“Julian’s in a cell because he betrayed his coven and broke into the Sacred Sea chamber. It’s a breach in the peace treaty between the two covens. Julian has lost all integrity. He’s a cursed Hollow Heathen, and in order for Norse Woods to keep credibility, Julian has to be sacrificed.”
“A human in exchange for breaking and entering is not fair.”
Her eyes sprang open. “In this town, it is.”
I shifted closer to Kioni, slid my eyes between hers. “Tell me the truth. Tell me, how do I save him?”
For a moment, Kioni stayed silent as if to choose her words carefully. Then, “You can’t. The only way to save Julian is by some kind of miracle, and miracles don’t happen in Weeping Hollow.”
My gaze flickered over her round face. “A miracle, something that’s never been done,” I whispered, locking eyes on her with my hollow heart shaking inside my chest.
Breaking the curse has never been done before.
It was the only way to end the cycle once and for all.
I had to sacrifice myself.
It was risky, but if Julian died, I had nothing left to lose. Kioni’s eyes hardened as if to recognize my revelation.
But my heart made up its mind.