When we rounded the corner and came upon the bathroom, a strangled cry left my throat. My mother was draped halfway out of the tub … a tub filled with her blood. Her normally thick candy-pink hair hung in wet clumps and stuck to her arms. Trissa reached out and grabbed my arm, hard. I was openly weeping again without realizing. The pain on my arm shook me from my grief, and I pulled myself together.
Kira bowed deeply to me. “I’ve tried everything. I’m sorry, Lily.” She was a healer and her bow was telling me this was it and nothing could be done. That alone crushed any hope I’d had that my mother would be healed.
I fell to my knees as my mom’s eyes tracked the room to find me. She was so beautiful, even now. Hair the color of a puckle flower petal, eyes that shone like stars. My mother was my hero. Seeker of the unfound, giver of life. She was irreplaceable, my whole world.
“Lily,” she breathed, and it killed me to see the tips of her hair stained red with blood, to see the light leaving her eyes.
She reached for my hand, and when our fingers touched, hers were so cold that I almost recoiled.
I shook my head at Kira. “There must be more you can do? Bring her to the crystal bed? Get the elders to lay light over her? Maybe there is an object or potion I could seek—”
“Lily…” Kira cut me off, speaking sternly, and I looked up to meet her face. She simply shook her head and then looked down at my mother’s abdomen.
I followed her gaze and a sob threatened to rip from my throat. Remembering Trissa’s instructions, I swallowed it, biting my tongue. My mother’s internal organs were splayed outside of her abdomen. I hadn’t seen it when I first walked in.
It was too late.
It was a miracle she was still alive.
“My sweet … Lily.” My mother reached up and traced spirals on my face, causing tears to spill out the corner of my eyes. She did this when I was a child; it used to put me to sleep. I wouldn’t sleep ever again. Not after this.
“Mom … I love you so much.” I didn’t know what to say, only that I shouldn’t cry. I shouldn’t let her think I was weak and couldn’t handle the responsibility of being Faerie’s only remaining seeker.
She nodded. “And I you. My little seeker … the last daughter of light. The only one who—” She stopped and turned her head to the side, away from me, spitting up bright red blood.
“No!” I rushed forward and placed my hand on her heart. I didn’t have healing affinity of course, but I had a small knack like all Fae did, just not like Kira. Still, I tried. I pulsed purplish silver light into my mother and she turned to look back at me, lips stained red.
“Lily … you must take up my life’s work. Find my journal … the truth…” She winced in pain, then reached out and placed her hand over my heart as mine rested on hers.
Journal? This was all so confusing; my heart couldn’t bear to see her like this. I just wanted her to be free from pain.
I nodded, tears filling my eyes. “I will honor your name, always.” I didn’t know what her life’s work was or what the daughter of light comment was about either, but I would do whatever required so that she could die in peace. I was three months away from my twenty-first birthday and my blue door ceremony. She would have told me everything then.
She looked fierce all of a sudden and her eyes glowed with light. “You must protect Faerie from the Sons of Darkness.”
Sons of Darkness?
I looked to Trissa. Maybe my mom wasn’t thinking right. Trissa simply nodded as if in agreement with my mother.
“Okay. I will.” My voice was stronger than I thought it would be.
Daughter of light, Sons of Darkness, why was I just now hearing about this? My mother’s life work involved protecting Faerie? Protect from whom? That was my assignment?
“I found six of them.” My mother’s hand shook and her legs trembled, splashing the bloody bathwater around. “But you will need to return the rest.”
I had no idea what in the hell she was saying. “I will, Mom. I’ll do whatever is needed of me. Don’t worry.” Tears streamed down my face and she nodded.
“Trissa will … take you to Mara. She will teach you the way.”
Mara. My mother spoke of her often. She was the keeper of the blue door, and her most cherished friend.
“Okay, Mom. It’s okay. I’ll be alright.” I recognized that there was no saving her. I wanted her to go in peace. Nothing about this was okay, but I needed to pretend it was. Her body trembled as threads of blue light eked out of her hands and wove through the air. With the last remaining force she could muster, she ripped off the locket my father had given her before he died and gave it to me.
“If ever you are in peril, use my essence to … heal.” Her words were shaky and she wasn’t making sense. All of her blue light now flowed into the necklace that I clasped between my hands.
It would absorb her light, like a healing talisman. I’d seen one of these before; they were very special, but I didn’t want it. I wanted my mom.
“Mom…” I whimpered, not ready to say goodbye.
“Love you, Lil,” she breathed in a rasp, her blue light quivering in arcs around her body, shaking the locket between my fingers.
Not wanting my mother to leave this world in sadness, I began to sing.
“When the blue waters…” My voice was strikingly crisp given the circumstances. “Rush onto the land.”
My mother’s lips turned up into a smile. She was the one who taught me this song after all.
“When the sun goes down on the sand…” My voice shook as my mother’s eyes rolled into her head. Blue tendrils of light swirled in the air as they sought out the magical locket between my fingers. My skin tingled as my mother’s light magic poured around me.
Kira stepped up behind me and white light poured from her palms, saturating my mother’s body.
“May the ancestors welcome you with grace and ease. It’s been an honor to serve as your healer.” Kira’s final death proclamation had the song dying in my throat.
When my mother’s eyes drifted shut and her hand fell from my chest, a scream ripped from my throat, my body collapsing backward into Trissa. Her arms came around me and held me tightly, while the world crumbled around me one blue thread of light magic at a time.
My mother was my link to this world, my nurturer, my best friend. Now I was a ship without an anchor.
I lay there for what felt like hours, but must have only been a short while.
Kira knelt to pick me up. “I’ll take her back.”
Trissa shook herself and I pulled my body up from the floor. My limbs felt like sandbags, but nothing quite matched the misery in my heart. I took one last look at my mother.
“No.” Trissa’s tone was firm. “She must meet with the elders and begin her training.”
My jaw popped open. “My mother just died. There will be a month-long period of mourning and the people—”
“Lily, I’m following your mother’s orders, the elders’ orders. You are our last seeker. You will be trained at once. Your mother will be laid to rest at sea and you will carry on her work immediately.” Her face was hardened and the coldness in her tone shocked me.