“What are you doing?” I ask, lugging the heavy pot over to the fire. I set it into the circular holder with a slosh, a splash of water sizzling in the fire below.
Staring at the black creature, she cocks her head. “You don’t like spiders. Why?”
My chin wrinkles. “I just don’t. They’re…frightening. The way they can kill you with one bite, it creeps me out.”
Not dissimilar to the way Reapers kill with just one touch, I catch myself thinking.
“Very few can do that,” she says, casting me a look over her shoulder.
“So?” I say in defense, retrieving the pouch of leaves from the table and carrying them to the pot. “Even if it’s only one in a hundred, that’s still a big chance and I’d rather not die. I think that’s a fairly normal desire in life: not to die.”
Rolling her eyes, she turns back to the spider, hand raising. The shadow it casts looms over the spider like a dark cloud. “Would you like me to kill it for you then? So you can stop worrying about it?”
I almost spill the tea leaves everywhere at the suggestion. “What? No! Don’t!”
Her hand stills. “Why not?”
I approach the bed, ready to tug her away, but we both recoil when black smoke spirals from her hands at my proximity. Instead, I clear my throat, backing away steadily, slow enough that I catch her glaring down at her hand before I turn back to the pot. I pluck a leaf from the pouch and pinch it between my fingers into the water. Behind me, the mattress creaks and squeaks, and Sinisa plops down away from the spider to sit on the bed.
When the tea starts to boil, I pour enough into the cup to fill it halfway. The memory leaves can last a long time and provide many memories, if prepared correctly and used sparingly. The trick is not to use too much but also not to dilute the dose more than necessary. I’ve kind of mastered it after these last few weeks. Actually, maybe that isn’t something I should be so proud of.
Rather than handing the cup to her directly and risking evoking her dark power again, I slide it across the table. “It’s ready when you are.”
Sinisa approaches the table and cup like a snake getting ready to coil around its prey, as if she thinks if she doesn’t strike first, it might attack her. It’s the first time I realize how terrifying the position she’s in must be—so much for being named after the Divine Altúyur of compassion, I hadn’t even once considered what she might be going through right now. Every time I drink the memory tea, I at least know the ghosts that haunt me and am willingly welcoming them back. But she is going in blind. She has no idea what the memory tea will unlock for her.
She brings the mug up to her mouth, steam rising to her nose.
“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to—”
“I want to,” she says, and she sounds so unequivocally sure that I’m actually jealous. If only I could ever make choices so easily.
“Well then, all you do now is focus on a memory from before.”
Her eyes flick up from the mug. “I don’t have any memories from before. Isn’t that the whole point of this?”
“Oh, right.” My hands find their familiar place intertwined before my face as I draw out a thoughtful but utterly useless, “Uh. So, it doesn’t have to be a full memory. It can be anything. Like if there’s a scent you remember, or a song, or a name, an object. Something like that.”
“I remember blood,” she says, and my skin runs cold.
“Oh. Okay, well, that might be—”
Before I can finish, she dumps the mug back into her throat. In one great gulp, she drains the tea and bangs the cup onto the wooden table.
From experience, I know that the tea doesn’t take long to work. Once the warmth reaches her stomach, the memory will come to life around her. She will be transported to her past, and considering this is her first time, she might even believe it’s real.
It’s entirely possible that we should’ve both been more afraid of what she was about to unlock.
Shivering, like the room is made from ice, I sink back against the wall, trying to get as far away from her as possible. If blood is her only memory, whatever she’s about to experience is likely to be hostile…
I should’ve warned her more, should’ve given her some tips on how to remain grounded in the midst of an illusion.
Distance hollows her features, the tea snatching her away.
I watch her with cautious curiosity, like a field mouse eyeing whatever it is that field mice eye from their safe distance away so that they aren’t devoured by a fox. I open my mouth, prepared to say something she might find helpful, but before I can, she collapses.
I take a step toward her, thinking the worst. I’ve never heard of anyone having an allergic reaction to the memory tree leaves, but I’ve also not heard many stories of people using them. The tree has been under protection for centuries.
“Sinisa? Are you o—”
“No. No-no-no-no.” Writhing on the floor, Sinisa wails, her voice years younger than before.
She tries crawling backward, away from something horrific that I can’t see but I know is all too real to her. Tears ripple down her cheeks like rivers as her body stops abruptly. She stares at her leg, kicking it relentlessly, trying to free it from a grip that is a ghost to me.
“Let go of me! Let go!” she sobs, her voice harsh.
Something’s not right. Something can’t be right. She’s thirteen years old. This memory should be one of fondness, one of playing with other children, and doing chores, not of…this. No child should endure this.
Especially not a second time over.
My knees crash to
