Hallowed

dread.

It’s spring. Between now and summer, my mother will leave us.

In the latest dream I’m in the cemetery, walking up the hillside among the graves on a sunny day. Looking at the people around me, I realize that this crowd is largely made up of the congregation. Walter holding a handkerchief. Billy, who doesn’t look sad in the least, cheery even, and smiles at me when I catch her eye. Mr. Phibbs in a gray tweed sport coat. Then there are others who I don’t recognize, angel-bloods from other parts of the world, people my mom lived and worked with during her one hundred and twenty years on earth.

It seems so obvious now that this was about my mom. Why couldn’t I see that from the start?

The answer is simple: because Tucker never shows up. Never. Not in any of the visions.

Not this time, either. I try to ignore my growing sense of betrayal, that there could be no possible reason that’s good enough for him not to be there at my mother’s funeral. He’s not dying, which is a huge relief. But he’s not there.

If only there was something that this vision’s telling me to do, an action to take, some sense of — pardon the pun— purpose in all of this, a way to train and plan and prepare the way I did for the forest fire. But the dream doesn’t seem to be telling me to do anything but to get ready for the biggest loss of my life. I feel like a bug waiting under God’s enormous shoe, and all this dream is telling me, all it’s leading me to, is to show up and stand there and wait to be crunched.

If I ever do get to meet God, the way Mom used to talk about, then He’s going to have some serious explaining to do, is all I’m saying. Because this just feels mean.

In the dream, we reach a place near the top of the hill where everybody stops. I walk like I’m underwater, one slow foot in front of the other. As the crowd parts to let me pass, something starts to freeze up inside of me. I stop breathing as I take the final steps. I think, I don’t want to see.

But I do see, and nothing could have prepared me for the sight of my mother’s coffin, a rich and gleaming mahogany-colored coffin, topped with a mass of white roses.

I have the weirdest thought at this moment. I can’t tell if it’s me or future-Clara, but I think, Did Mom pick the coffin herself? It’s so her. I imagine her coffin shopping, strolling around a showroom eyeballing coffins the way she does antique furniture, sizing them up, finally glancing over at the salesman and pointing to one and saying, “I’ll take this one.” This one.

My vision blurs. I sway on my feet. Christian’s hand abruptly leaves mine. He steps closer to me, encircling my waist with his arm, steadies me. Then his other hand, his right hand this time, returns to mine. He squeezes briefly.

Do you need to sit down? he asks gently in my mind.

No, I reply. My sight clears. I stare at Jeffrey, who’s gazing at the coffin so intently I think it could burst into flames, fists clenched at his sides. At first I want to look everywhere but at the coffin, and then when I do, when I cast around it, all I get are people’s faces, searching eyes, sympathetic expressions. I force myself to focus on a single white rose. The light is filtering through the trees at an angle, which strikes this one small rosebud, just beginning to open its petals, a perfect glowing white.

Then the sorrow comes, a wave of grief so fierce I struggle to suppress the choking sound in the back of my throat. I feel strangely detached, floating away. Someone moves to the other side of the coffin, clears his throat. It’s a red-haired man with solemn hazel eyes. It takes me a second to place him. Stephen. A priest or something. He meets my eyes.

He wants to know if you’re ready, says Christian in my mind.

Ready?

For him to start.

Please. Yes.

Stephen nods solemnly.

“Dearly beloved,” he says.

That’s when I check out. I don’t hear what he says as he goes on in his slight Irish brogue.

I’m sure he’s saying good things about my mother. About her wit. Her kindness. Her strength.

Words that couldn’t even begin to describe her.

I focus on the rose.

The sorrow grows, expanding like a frozen lake inside me. Soon they will lower the coffin into the ground. They will cover it with earth. My beautiful, spirited, sweet Meg will be gone forever. .

My heart leaps. This isn’t like the sorrow attacks I had before. These are words, and they’re not my words. Not my sorrow, or my feelings.

There is a Black Wing here, after all.

Samjeeza.

I’m suddenly uber-aware of everything. I feel the breeze against my bare arms. Birds sing distantly in the trees. I smell pine, roses, wildflowers. I search all the faces around me, some of which are gazing back mournfully, but I don’t see Samjeeza. His feelings are coming through loud and clear now. It’s him. I’m sure of it. He is watching us from a distance and can’t stand how we can gather so near her grave to say good-bye in her last moments above earth. He loved her, he thinks. He loved her and he’s furious that he lost her, after all these years of waiting for her. He hates us. If his hate were the sun, it would burn us all to ash.

“Okay, everybody, let’s calm down,” says Billy, looking around the circle of angel-bloods who are gathered in the meadow around the campfire. “This is really no big deal.”

“No big deal?” exclaims a woman from across the circle. “She told us that a Black Wing will be at Maggie’s graveside.”

“Maybe she’s wrong. Black Wings can’t enter cemeteries. They’re hallowed ground,” says someone else.

“Is Aspen Hill hallowed, though? It’s not a traditional cemetery. There’s no churchyard.”