Once Upon a Witch's Moon

Once Upon a Witch's Moon Part 1: Ch 6

CHAPTER SIX

At home, Twist couldn't shake the image of the skulls in her dream. The Last Maiden, they'd called her. Weird. She'd always hated her nightmare, but the thought of going to sleep tonight, of seeing the skulls again?

She pulled the marble figure out of her backpack and examined it again. Why had her pre-tornado self kept such a tight hold on this one thing? What did it mean?

Remembering the lie she'd told in her nightmare last night, she tucked it into her pocket next to the sea glass heart her dad had given her. If she threw it away, maybe she'd throw away the nightmare, too.

Twist intercepted her mother before it was time for Bossy II's afternoon milking. She grabbed the bucket, and said pseudo-cheerfully, "I need to have some animal time, after my first day back the zoo."

Her mom's smile dimmed a little. "Oh, honey. The first day is always the worst."

Twist smiled, to take the sting out of her words, when she saw that her mom was seriously worried.

"I'm just kidding. I made a new friend in gym class."

Her mother's hope would have been palpable, even if Twist couldn't see thought dust. "Who?"

"Her name's Sofia. She's new. I think this is going to be my best year yet. Be back in a bit," she said, leaving before her mom got a chance to continue the interrogation.

The little baby-sized barn that her dad had built to keep the cow and store the hay he mowed up in the summer was cool and semi-dark as Twist drew up the milking stool and patted Bossy II's flank. "You know, girl, you may not be my only friend any more. There's a new girl who doesn't think I'm a freak. Yet."

The cow flicked her tail and gave Twist a baleful eye. She didn't like it when Twist talked and milked.

"Sorry. My bad." Twist bent to her task, wondering, not for the first time, if Bossy II remembered that the wind had taken her mother? If she even remembered she'd had a mother. Maybe cows were luckier than people. They didn't remember what they didn't remember. And they weren't afraid of what they might remember when they least expected it.

She finished her milking and checked the chicken coop. Three eggs. She ran her fingers over the smoothness of the eggs and marveled at the delicate colors - light blue from haughty Nan, mottled yellow from Henrietta, plain brown from Henny Penny. "Hey girls, guess what? You're the star of my high school's online lit journal. What do you think of that?"

She closed her eyes and tried to remember before the tornado. Her memory had always been a smooth, impenetrable surface like the egg's shell before. Now, ever since she had started trying to get rid of the nightmare...little bits and pieces flashed so quickly she couldn't grab them long enough to make sense of them. But the smooth nothingness was gone. She concentrated, trying to hold on to one of the bits as it flashed by. Nothing. The egg in her hand cracked.

She looked down at the yolk dripping out between her fingers. "Great." She flung the remains of the egg far from the coop. Could it be possible that the changes in her nightmare signaled that her memory was coming back after all this time?

Remembering would change everything. Did she want that? It was one thing to make a friend. But to find out she had a family somewhere else? Sofia hadn't seemed to mind moving so much, but Twist couldn't remember her first seven years, and her last eight had been spent here. Home. She didn't want to move before she was ready. After high school. When she went to college.

She scattered feed, and asked the pecking hens, "Which is the chicken and which is the egg, girls?" Were her memories coming back because she was trying to get rid of the nightmare? Or was the nightmare finally cracking the shell protecting those memories?