My Maddie (Hades Hangmen #8) - Tillie Cole Page 0,96

the big brother who always tried to keep you safe. Who held you, comforted you and loved you, up until your last breath, passing from this cruel world into one of peace and light and love… A big brother who believed he had hurt you in some way, a big brother who punished himself for it, every day. This, when all he did was try—try to love you for who you were and to pray you would never leave him…

Maddie said I didn’t harm him. Maddie said that God took Isaiah away from me, because Poppa would keep on hurting him. Isaiah was taken away from me to be with mama. So that she could love him. So that Poppa wouldn’t abuse him, like he had me and Asher. I looked to Asher. He was still crying. His head was fucking bent to hide the fact that he was crying. Because Poppa hurt him too. Poppa hurt Asher… like he hurt me. Like he would’ve hurt Isaiah when he got older. My heart beat too fast. I pulled my hand back from Maddie.

“Flame?”

My feet had to move. I had to move. I paced. I looked out over the river. Isaiah had been out in there. I pushed my hands into my eyes. Isaiah had been crying before he’d died. His crying hurt my ears. He didn’t stop. He never stopped crying because he was in pain. Maddie’s words came back to me. You were spared from a man who would seek to do you harm. In death, you received protection… you were granted peace…

Poppa said that I’d killed Isaiah, that my flames had killed him. My demons had taken him from me. Maddie said something different—God took Isaiah so Poppa couldn’t do to Isaiah what had been done to me. Poppa left us alone. He left us both in the cellar. We were hungry, we were thirsty, but Poppa never came back. Isaiah’s breathing changed, but I couldn’t touch him. I told Isaiah I couldn’t touch him. I can’t touch you… I’ll hurt you…

I stared down at my hands. I’d picked him up. I’d picked him up and cradled him, like Mama did. I stopped walking and just looked at my palms. My vision went burry. I could see Isaiah in my arms. He was breathing badly. His skin was red. He was hot. His eyes were funny, glazed over. I rocked my body back and forth like Mama used to do… “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star…” I heard a gasp and I lifted my head. Maddie was watching me. She was still crying. My hands were still up in the air. I could still see Isaiah in my arms. “How I wonder what you are…” I kept singing. My throat hurt. I thought I was hurting Isaiah. But Maddie said I didn’t, that the flames in my blood weren’t evil. They were bursts of light. They existed to lead me from the darkness—away from my Poppa. Maddie said God had put them there, not because I was evil, but to chase away evil, to chase away Poppa and Pastor Hughes, and the snakes they put on my skin. Maddie said Poppa was a wicked and cruel man.

“He hurt me,” I told Isaiah.

“Baby,” Maddie whispered.

I looked down at Isaiah, who was still cradled in my arms. “He hurt me. He always hurt me. He pushed inside me. He made me cry. He brought snakes to me. He made me release the flames.” I looked at the scars on my arms under Isaiah’s little body. Maddie said the flames didn’t have to be released anymore. That I would feel better with them inside. If I let them, they would scare all the badness away. They were flames of good, not bad. Like Moses. Like Moses and the burning bush. My mama used to tell me about that story. Maybe she knew too? Maybe she knew the flames weren’t bad.

I remembered my mama’s voice. “Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up.” The sound of mama’s voice in my head made me feel better. She always made me feel better. I looked down at Isaiah. “I thought I had killed her,” I confessed, thinking of when I held her hand. “She died. I thought I had taken her away from us.” I felt the flames in my blood, bubbling under my skin. My jaw clenched. But I let the flames burn. I let them burn. I breathed