She of the Sea

4 of 53 - A Hasty Plan

Cassie's mind was foggy, like she was caught in a nightmare. Her momma was dead.

Her momma was dead.

Her momma was dead.

She couldn't think of anything else, and she couldn't stop crying.

Aunt Marnie made her bathe and had given her some oversized clothes to wear. She served a hot breakfast, but Cassie could only pick at it. Her stomach was knotted, and she worried she might vomit.

They sat in a bedroom Aunt Marnie told her was now hers. She looked out the window but wasn't really seeing anything. Aunt Marnie was brushing her hair. It always made Cassie feel good when Momma brushed her hair, but now she felt nothing except for sadness and fear.

While she brushed, Aunt Marnie asked, "Can you talk about what happened yet?"

She didn't want to but knew Aunt Marnie needed to hear the story in order to figure out what to do next. "I don't know how Momma realized the hunters had come, but she woke me." Cassie told her the rest of it, all the way up to when she called her from Sunset Beach.

Aunt Marnie never interrupted while she spoke. When done, Cassie felt a little better for having shared what happened to her.

"Your momma was always careful, so I need you to think really hard. Did you visit the school nurse or a doctor or have any kind of test done that you never told your momma about? Has anybody taken a sample of your blood?"

Momma warned her all the time about blood. She had warned her so often that Cassie had mouthed off to her the last time. She felt so guilty now for having done that. "No. I would never let them take my blood." She thought about being in the nurse's office the previous week when school first started. "They stuck a cotton stick up my nose to test for virus but there was no blood."

Aunt Marnie sighed and squeezed shut her eyes. When she opened them, she looked sad, like a person feeling sorry for a hurt animal.

Her reaction frightened Cassie. "I didn't do anything wrong did I?"

Aunt Marnie rested a hand on her arm. "No, sweetie, what's done is done. Don't think about it anymore."

Although she tried holding back her tears, she couldn't. Aunt Marnie held her while she cried. When she stopped, the hiccups started again. "Why do the hunters want to kill me, Aunt Marnie? What have I ever done to them? I'm just a fifth grader."

"Cassie, those men are not hunting you because of anything you did. They're hunting you because of who you are."

Her new tears were angry ones, not sad ones. She raised her voice. "Who am I? I'm a girl like all the other girls in my class at school."

"Yes, sweetie, you are a girl, but you're also something other."

Cassie pounded her fists into her knees. "I don't want to be something other. I want to be like my friends. I want Momma."

Aunt Marnie stood and pulled back the covers on the bed. "You're exhausted. Take a nap and I promise you we'll talk about it some more after you wake up."

She climbed into the bed because she was too tired to argue. "Aunt Marnie, are you special like my momma and me?"

Her aunt pulled a sheet up to her chin. "No, sweetheart, I'm not descended from your bloodline. I'm your aunt through marriage. My ex-husband and your daddy are brothers."

Cassie couldn't remember her father. He was killed when the fishing boat he worked on had capsized during a bad storm. It happened when she was three. "Does that mean my daddy was special?"