Lilith's Arc

Chapter 21 of 40

Mnemora's words stayed with Lilith all night. If the goddess held every memory, the children would follow the goddess. So the next morning Lilith gathered all three of them in the cottage before Mnemora arrived. Gabe sat by the window, still and watching. Novalee held Hadley on the rug. Lilith set the crystal keepsake on the table between them, where it caught the light and threw teal across the wall. Mnemora came at midday, small and pale, her white dress trailing gold at the hem. Novalee ran to her at once and took her hand. That was the wound Lilith meant to close. "I called you here," Lilith said, "to give you back." Mnemora tilted her head. "Give me back." "You taught Novalee to seal her own memory. Teach me the same. Teach all of us." Lilith knelt so the children could see her face. "I don't want a keeper standing between us. I want them to hold their own memories, and hold them with me. Not run to you every time the thread bites." Mnemora studied her for a long moment. "You made me their keeper to save them. Now you unmake it. You know the risk. If they seal wrong, the thread takes what they miss." "Then teach them to seal right," Lilith said. Mnemora knelt beside Novalee. "Show your mother how. Say a memory back to me. Let her watch." Novalee frowned, but she wanted to show she could. She spoke her first steps, plain and sure, the words she already owned. Gold light rose from Mnemora's palm and closed the memory tight. "Like that," Mnemora said. She turned to Lilith. "Now you." Lilith drew a breath. She spoke a small thing—the crystal keepsake, the day Gabe first held it, six years old, laughing. She spoke it back to Mnemora word by word. The gold light rose and sealed it. It was hers now. Not the goddess's. Hers. Gabe watched from the window. He did not run to Mnemora. He watched his mother do the sealing herself. "Can I do that?" he asked. His voice was careful, but he asked her, not the goddess. "Yes," Lilith said. "I'll say the memory first. Then you keep it." One by one, she taught them. She read Hadley's from the sealed book and spoke it back herself, sealing it under Mnemora's watching eye but by Lilith's own hand. Novalee sealed a second memory and looked, this once, at her mother's face instead of the light. Mnemora stood when it was done. "You've cut the cord to me," she said. "They'll seal for themselves now. And they'll seal beside you." She paused. "But there's a memory I cannot seal for anyone. Tre's. He wasn't here. The thread is on his page already." Lilith looked at the empty doorway where her husband should have stood. The children were hers again. But Tre was still unsealed, and the thread was already eating his name.