CASSANDRA
The trees rising around me are tall like giants, and I’m a tiny ant standing amid them. Semi-darkness embraces me here, the soft orange light of a lantern bathing the roots and the ground in front of me. I know this place, but can’t quite put my finger on it. Even if it looks like every other forest out there, I feel an uncanny familiarity to it.
“Did you see it?” a soft male voice asks over my shoulder.
I jerk in surprise, then whirl around to face the source of it. “What?” I blurt out, my heart skipping a beat.
A man kneels next to me, and he’s so tall, even in this position he’s taller than me. He has dark eyes and dark hair, and the first signs of age in the form of wrinkles to the sides of his eyes. “Did you see it?” he repeats, his lips stretching in a smile. “The moth?”
I blink several times, struggling to understand it. A moth? Where? He must see through my confusion, because he points over my shoulder at a tree. I turn, following the direction, and my gaze runs over his hand first.
His fingers are black, all the way to his knuckles. As if he had ditched them in ink. As if he... As if he is just like me. I look down at my hands, opening the palms, and it’s only then I understand it. My hands are not tinted. They don’t even look like my hands. Small things, soft palms, the hands of a child.
That’s why the man looked so tall. I’m a child. When Giulia touched me, she sent me straight into the past. Then this man... Could he be?
He touches the space between my shoulder blades, pointing again. “There. Do you see it?”
When I focus, I finally spot it. The bug is as brown as the tree bark, perfectly camouflaged. It bats its wings, flying close to a flower, hanging from the side of the tree. What am I doing here? Why this memory?
I nod at the man. He smiles at me. “Did you know that moths and bats are pollinators? They fly from flower to flower, helping them grow fruit. We wouldn’t have all the fruits we do without them. Even if they’re ugly creatures.”
I curl my nose. These creatures don’t bring me the greatest of memories. I used to love moths, and the orphanage had plenty, but the other kids always made me feel the worst because of that. Just because I enjoyed the critters that crawled in the darkness. Maybe that was a part of me that related to them. A part that knew there was darkness inside me.
“They’re creatures of the shadows,” I say, not thinking straight.
“And that’s not a bad thing. The shadows are as part of the nature as the light. There has to be balance. Don’t let that fool you, Cassie. Shadows are not the same as evil, and light is not the same as good. There are no sharp separations in the world. Everything is gray.”
I frown at him, analyzing his face. “Are you really my father?”
He cracks up, throwing his head back. “Well, that’s what I’ve been told!”
“Don’t tease her,” a female voice says from the distance, and I whirl around to face her. This voice washes over me like warm water, like a blanket cradling me closer. It ignites a longing in my chest, something that’s always been there. A woman walks closer, amid the trees, carrying another lantern. Under her cotton sleeping robe, I see the bottoms of pajama pants. She smiles, and the sight of it breaks my heart. “Of course he’s your father, Cassie. Where did that come from?”
My mind grows foggy. “I don’t know,” is all I can say. The words he had been telling me resonate deeply with me. I understand what he was doing then. He was trying to teach me from a young age that being a Shadow Mage wasn’t a bad thing. Even if the world would hunt me down. Even when everyone else said the opposite.
His fingers are tinted, but not as much as mine. Did he use his power less often? I lift my gaze to see my parents chatting, and there’s happiness on their faces as they kneel next to me and point at things in the woods. My head gets even lighter, and I know I’m in the passenger seat now.
This is a memory. The time for participation is over.
My child body goes along with their jokes and teases. She tries to catch the moth, then climbs atop roots. I’ve always loved the woods at night, that’s a given. Something I learned from my parents. Watching them makes me hurt in ways I didn’t think possible, and even if I could say something now, I wouldn’t know what.
One thing is certain. They loved me. They loved me so much.
A bat darts above our heads. Mom and Dad duck, gaze following the animal. Something inside my chest burns with the thrill. That bat is a creature of the shadows like me, and yet, he has so much more freedom. He’s accepted. Part of something bigger. Important. A weird sense of envy burns through me, and I want to follow him. I want to run after him and flap my arms until I turn into a bat myself. The feeling is strange, alien, and I know it’s merely the thoughts of a child.
Even so, my child-self rushes into the woods. My parents call out behind me, but she doesn’t stop. I can merely watch as our feet brave the trees, over roots, across the forest. The bat makes a turn and I follow. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the ending of the trees and a cliff, and I know exactly where I am.
That place with my Not-Mother, and the trees we met Kayn. Where Donatello turned on me.
My heart skittering, I watch my child-self racing after the animal, and magic buzzes around me as if I had crossed a barrier. My feet take me to a beaten path and I keep going, my cheeks hurting from smiling too wide. I lose my breath, and lose sight of the bat, and it’s only then that I stop.
My chest heaves and my throat burns as I suck air in. The sound of a breaking branch makes me turn, half-expecting my father with a disappointed look on his face. My father is not who I see.
A wolf stops, gaping back at me. I don’t move. Don’t dare to move. Slowly, its upper lip curls up, showing rows of gleaming teeth. Somehow I know it’s grinning.
The wolf shifts, magic making it easy and painless for him to become a man. He stands tall above me, that same wicked grin across his face. I step back. Fear slithers down my spine.
“Well, well, well...” he starts, stepping closer. “What do I find here? Are you looking for you granny?” The Little Red Riding Hood joke doesn’t escape me, but I have no control over my body. If I did, he would hear my opinion on lame jokes. And I’m not even red-headed. He stops, lifting his head and sniffing the wind. “Shit...” He looks back down, an eyebrow arched. “What is that smell?”