Page 26 of Tangled at the Root
The sleep had come unnaturally, so heavy I felt like the eshé itself was trying to drag me into its powerful, unseen depths. I’d slipped onto my back in the water, my limbs refusing to respond, as though weighed down by elephants. I’d tried to hold my breath, but my body had disobeyed. I couldn’t jerk. Couldn’t move. I laid there in frozen, helpless silence, screaming on the inside while I drowned, my mother sitting stiffly on the floor with her back to the bath.
When I came to, I was out of the water. My mother was sobbing, clutching my wet, naked body to her chest. I gasped, coughing, heaving as I vomited bathwater all over her shaking form.
“Oh God, oh God,” she cried, holding me so tightly it hurt. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, edémi.”
Even then, a part of me had refused to comprehend what she’d done. I’d been too young to understand, and she’d probably felt too guilty and upset to explain. Perhaps she’d thought, if she’d given a name to it, it would have become too real.
I only, finally understood when I was nine—when I’d aggressively rejected thirteen-year-old Efighenelo’s advances for the millionth time, and he’d responded by shoving me into the stream. I’d stumbled and slipped on the moss-covered bank, and cracked my skull open on a rock.
Efi had run home to cry to his parents. They’d rushed to the stream and stood over my corpse, frantically arguing over how best they could cover for their son, unaware that my blood had stopped flowing freely into the water, and my skull was pressing shut, the skin around it slowly sealing itself back together.
I’d heaved in a breath while they’d still been whispering furiously, rising up from the shallow waters like a demon from their worst nightmares, my eyebrows furrowed from a residual headache.
They’d both run screaming, and my “secret” had been exposed.
“That isnota gift,” Efi’s mother had spat when the village had called a meeting. She’d buried her empathy before she’d even seen my dead body, staunch with the need to protect her son, and as such, willing to throw me to the wolves. “That is the touch of the devil.”
My mother and father had stood in the middle of the gathering hut, framing my trembling body on both sides like sentinels, my mother’s fingers digging possessively into my arm. I’d wonderedwhy they’d made us stand in the centre like we were the ones on trial. Shouldn’t Efi be standing in my place? This washisfault. How often had he been told to leave me alone?He’dhurtme.
“Itisa gift,” my mother had protested. “She heals. She has a healing power more astounding than we’ve ever conceived.”
“Can she heal anyone else but herself?” Efi’s father had asked serenely, his cold, calculating eyes locked on mine. Willing to do anything to keep the attention off what his son had done.
My mother’s grip on me tightened when I tried to speak. I reluctantly pressed my lips closed, even though the words burned like hot pepper in my throat.
“Yes,” she’d said with unshakable faith, willing to lie for me. To die for me.
“Step aside then, and let her heal me.”
“Her gift is still settling,” my mother had replied smoothly. “She still needs some time—”
“Dominique.” The High Priestess’s voice was soft but reprimanding. “Enough.”
My mother’s mouth snapped shut. Her hand, still wrapped almost painfully around my arm, began to tremble. The High Priestess’s gift was that she knew when people were lying.
“How do we know that what you speak is the truth?” one of the elders had asked, eyeing Efi’s parents critically. “After all, no one but your son and yourselves witnessed this apparently amazing feat.” He’d said “amazing” like he meant precisely the opposite.
I remember Efi’s father going strangely still. The High Priestess might be able to tell when people were lying, but I’d come to learn that sometimes, the difference between a lie and a truth depended on the belief of the person who told it. They’d seemingly seen me “come back to life”, but who was to say I’d actually died in the first place? Perhaps Efighenelo, in his panic, had been mistaken.
In his hand, Efi’s father had held his hunting spear, his knuckles pale with how hard he’d gripped it.
The next thing I remember is excruciating pain. My mother screaming. My father shouting. The elders and other coven members yelling. My mother had caught me before I could fall. I remember staring in confusion at the hilt of the spear standing straight from my chest.
That, to me, is the first time I’d died.
It had lasted barely a minute—thirty seconds, if that—for me to awaken again to my mother on her knees, cradling me to her chest, rocking me back and forth, her face wet, chest heaving with sobs. The spear was gone, my torn and bloody dress the only outward evidence of what had just happened. I was healed, but I could still feel the phantom jab, pain spreading out from my heart to what felt like my entire body. It hurt worse than anything I’d ever experienced.
I brought my knees protectively up to my chest, buried my face in my mother’s bosom, and wept.
“We are in agreement, then. Our ancestors’ gifts are supposed to serve the community and the world at large. Thisgift,” the elders decided, their gazes unforgiving, “serves no one but yourself.”
I wake to the taste of earth and blood. Somehow, I’ve ended up on my back on the floor. The sun is shining brightly into the study through the wide windows, my candles flickering gently around me. I roll over, coughing uselessly because the taste inmy throat is psychological—a magical manifestation of my “gift” after it has completed its job.
I stiffen when I remember everything that had just happened.
Fuck. Oh God.Genevieve.
I stumble to my feet, gritting my teeth against a rush of lightheadedness. Pausing for a much-needed moment makes me feel like screaming, but I need to if I don’t want to immediately pass out. I need the sticky toffee from my trunk, but Genevieve can’t wait.
