the corner of the room. The chair at the desk is empty, but a journal lies open in front of it. A quill pen rests in a small glass jar.
I take a few steps into the room, toward the desk and hear a quiet cry behind me. Turning around, I see William Owens, my father, seated in the inglenook of the fireplace.
Zoë stands in the doorway. I talk to her without taking my gaze off him. “He cried a lot. He thought I didn’t know, but I did.”
She doesn’t say anything, but the expression on her face tells me her thoughts. “My mom and Anna died today. I knew they were going to, but he didn’t believe me. He still had hope that they’d make it out.”
“So Clara is still alive?”
“Yeah. She will be for eight more days. She’s upstairs in her bed.”
Zoë hesitates for a moment before asking, “Do you want to go see her?”
I don’t answer right away. I can’t tear my gaze away from William. He looks so much like my dad. I would have a difficult time telling them apart if they were standing next to each other. He appears older and well worn, most likely from living in a more difficult time. His facial expression holds fear, panic, dread, confusion, and shock. I want to comfort him, but it’s not possible. I’m only looking at a memory—an impression of time. “Yeah, let’s go see her.”
We carefully climb the shaky wooden staircase that leads to the second floor. Clara lies in her bed, covered with several blankets to keep her warm. Her brown curls are piled softly around her face. I brushed her hair to keep her pretty.
“Have you noticed that her skin is a different color than Mary’s or Anna’s?” Zoë asks me.
I hadn’t even thought about it until she mentioned it. “Do you think that’s because she’s still managing to stay alive somehow?”
“It’s possible. She’s pale, but she doesn’t have the gray tone that they had. And the veins—hers look normal.”
“She did live longer than they did. Maybe she never got pulled into the caligo. Maybe her body just couldn’t fight anymore.”
Without warning we are transported from the house to just outside of a small cabin. Through the small, dirty windows of the cabin, we can see people moving around inside and recognize the unmistakable glow of a fire. “I think we’re supposed to go inside,” Zoë says quietly.
The door creaks heavily as she pushes it open. Inside the cabin, the roaring fire in the center of the room lights the space. A dark-skinned woman dressed in tattered, soiled clothing stands at a table with her back to us. Her hair is covered in a white bonnet and beads of sweat drip down the back of her neck. She is speaking softly and quickly to herself in a foreign language. “I think that’s Hattie,” Zoë whispers to me.
We cautiously move into the cabin and closer to the woman. Her hands are hard at work creating something. Zoë walks up to the table to get a better look. “She’s making the pendant.”
I step around the table next to Zoë to get a closer look. “Udo-echebe ihe ọmụma,” she chants as she weaves a piece of twine into the intricate knot displayed on my pendant. She grabs a bowl from the table, dips a finger into it and utters the words, “ọbara nke onye iro,” as she rubs the dark liquid over the knot.
“Is that blood?” I ask Zoë.
“Maybe. She said something about blood and the enemy.”
“As in Isabel Del Bosque?”
“I don’t know. Could be the alloquet’s blood. It’s starting to look like you have quite a few enemies.” I answer with a sigh.
A gentle knock on the door sounds out. “Come in,” Hattie announces in her heavy accent, her attention never faltering from her work.
William Owens stands just inside the doorway.
“Come to the table,” she commands him without looking up from her work.
He cautiously steps forward, glancing shamefully around the cabin. I recognize some of the other faces from the large fire we saw earlier. William tries to avoid eye contact with them as they rise to their feet when he enters. “Please, go about your business. That’s not necessary.”
They reluctantly do as he says. He walks over to Hattie and stands next to her. “Miss Marshall, I—”
“You need not speak, only listen.”
She never takes her attention off the creation of the pendant. Her hands work speedily as she rubs a collection of dried herbs