The lightning grew closer, and his eyes were having trouble adjusting to the sudden contrasts in light. The storm’s thunder boomed, a chaotic rhythm that he could feel in his chest. Each tumultuous clap was closer than the last, and his ears rang after some of the louder ones. The humidity in the jungle was increasing, and he wondered how often the area flooded.
As he stumbled around, he heard it—the eerie song of a woman in mourning. It carried across the world, quietly at first, but growing louder. It was a song of loss, peace, and memory, the words foreign to him, but exposing an unfilled gap in his heart. The song was drowned out periodically by the thunder, but he no longer cared about the storm. He traipsed through the wood and brush, shoving his way through to the source.
“Cecilia!” he called, his voice cracking with the effort. “Cecilia, over here!” The wind whipped his words away, the ground beneath his feet quaking as the storm rolled over him. He watched the lightning dance between the clouds, illuminating large birds in the sky who beat their mighty wings, the thunder making his ears ring. He gazed at them in awe, watching them whip up the storm.
Perhaps there was something else out here with him after all.
“Cecilia! Cecilia!” He crawled through the bushes, rapping his staff on logs, rocks, anything he could find to generate a sound louder than his weak voice. Her song was growing louder, and he could make out the sinister glow of her body through the trees up ahead. His throat raw, he no longer formed words, simply screaming at the top of his lungs in the hopes that he could fill the silent spaces of the storm.
She emerged from the trees, her body passing through them like mist. Her hands were clutched to her chest in sadness, her mouth open wide as her song took over the cacophony of the world around him. Mike tripped over a log and fell face first onto the ground.
“Mike!” Her glowing hands took him by the arm and lifted him. Then she pulled at him, guiding him onto a new patch of flat ground.
The storm broke above them, and rain fell. Between Cecilia’s pulling and the aid of the staff, Mike broke into a near jog, his heart pounding, his ears ringing. The landscape was lit by lightning and the fires it had started. Glowing embers carried above the canopy like shooting stars. From the darkness emerged a cluster of rocks, and Cecilia led him to the other side of them. Here, large slabs of stone lay across each other like folded hands, and Mike stumbled after Cecilia up the dirt slope to an opening in the rocks, his feet occasionally slipping out from beneath him.
“Cecilia, thank God.” He pulled the banshee in for an embrace, her presence chilling his body but warming his heart. Cecilia clung to him — her steady presence plus the quieting effect of the cave made the world stabilize around him.
Getting cold, Mike let go. “What about the others, are they okay?”
Cecilia nodded. “We ran into some trouble. By the time we got into the greenhouse, it was too windy for Abella to fly, and Tink may have broken her foot, so she couldn’t come. I’ve never seen her so angry.”
“And you? You got hurt?”
“Aye, I did.” Cecilia pulled down the top of her dress, revealing a scar. “That knife was not of this world.”
“Yeah, well it belongs to the Mandragora now.” Mike sat down, then leaned against the wall. His whole body hurt now, his muscles cramping. “Is Naia okay?”
“Yes. She knew you were still alive, so she wasn’t too worried.” Cecilia stood. “I must report back to the others that you are safe.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
Cecilia smiled. “I shall return, a runsearc.” She blew him a kiss and faded from sight.
In the darkness, Mike waited. There was nothing else to do but sit and listen to the storm that raged outside.
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND what your problem is,” his mother told him, weaving the car in and out of traffic. Her breath was dangerous, a mixture of whiskey and cigarettes. What worried him more was the handful of pills he had seen her steal from someone’s medicine cabinet.
“I just want to go the the dance.” He was hoping he would get to see Lucy there, his lab partner from Biology. He felt like there had been something between them, a spark when they worked together at the fume hood. They were both in ninth grade, and he was new to the school, which meant Lucy had no reason to know any of his own personal history.
“And why is this dance so important? I need your help, Michael! How the fuck am I supposed to make things work if you won’t even help me?” She punctuated her words by pointing at him, her cigarette dangling limply from her lips. Her eyes somewhat glassy, she pulled briefly into oncoming traffic to go around a guy on a motorcycle.
“Help you with what?”
“Laundry. Bathrooms. Sweep the garage.” His mother flipped the bird at the guy ahead of her and blared her horn. They were already over the speed limit, but his mother had learned about a new check cashing place that had just opened, which meant the new hires might not figure out that her driver’s license was faked.
“That’s what you’re supposed to do!” Mike shouted. It was the list of things his mother had agreed to upon moving in with her old best friend from high school.
This was how it started. Offers to help out that never came to fruition. Eventually, Mike would be forced to do the work, but someone would catch on. They always caught on.
“You
