Page 60 of Old Secrets

“We will manage. Be still and quiet while we work, and all will be well. My love?”

My mother gathered the photographs, making certain each stack was neat and organized. “I am prepared.”

“Then let us begin.”

Something thrummed in the room, so low and quiet I questioned if I heard it at all. One by one, my mother slid a photograph to my father, who placed the fingertips of his left hand over the image. With his right hand, he traced a symbol along the glossy surface of the photograph’s paper. A red and black haze enveloped the image, sank into the surface, and disappeared.

Once the glow died away to nothing, my father passed the picture to Aiko, and my parents began the process again.

With each photograph, the thrum grew in intensity, and something in the air changed, as though some form of energy seethed nearby, watching and waiting. The familiar sensation enveloped me, and after some thought, I recognized it from my first time as a fox and I’d hidden in the loving embrace of the water.

Rather than the water holding me, it roiled somewhere far below, partnered with something else—something large and just as eager.

Sucking in a breath, I realized my parents somehow communed with the very Earth herself, beseeching the planet for her cooperation.

And, with each trespass on human life they pursued, each photograph showing the brutal end of someone’s existence, the Earth’s mourning grew—as did her willingness to join my parents’ cause.

Their magic worked because the Earth herself believed that Greenwich, along with the others responsible for such senseless, violent deaths, violated what it meant to be human, what it meant to help one another to survive in the great game of life.

As the sense of foreboding and grief grew, I understood why my parents established their boundaries as they had.

Their magic only worked because the Earth herself permitted it to.

By the time they finished all of the stacks, I wanted to find somewhere private to vomit, as the thrum had intensified to a bone-rattling roar.

“There. They have all been marked,” my father stated, and he made a gesture with a hand, as though waving away some errant smoke. “I offer our apologies to the sensitive. They will feel unwell for the rest of the day and likely fatigued—and it will be widespread. There were many more souls to be marked this time. The Earth has beheld their truths and found them guilty, for while she allows fate to twist and turn as it will, it was never her intention for her beloved children to do anything more than what is necessary to survive. We have all become wasteful beings unworthy of her regard. We are blessed she heard our plea and found our plight worth addressing. I would remember that were I you.”

I suspected my father jabbed at the Chinese delegation, but if they found insult or slight in his words, they showed no signs of it.

“You have done us a great boon,” Eric replied.

“And soon enough, you will do us a great boon. Your land birthed this monstrosity, and it should be your responsibility to make certain another such monstrosity is never birthed again.”

“We shall do our best.”

My father nodded, and my mother, after a few moments, did the same. She then said, “Your best is all we could ever ask of you, but next time, it will not be our children who suffer, but yours. If not for us, do it for those who walk behind you.”

“It shall be done.”

“We should rest until we must board the plane tomorrow. Eat well and in higher quantity than you are used to. The Earth exacts her tolls for the working of such magic, and we all paid a price for this in some fashion or another. And with how angry the Earth is, I would walk carefully and with good intentions in your heart. She sees and hears all, and she is not in a mood for forgiveness right now,” my mother warned.

Well, as far as beliefs went, I could get behind not pissing off the planet I lived on—and treating her with a bit more respect than I might have previously. “Will you be all right?”

“We’ll be fine, my daughter. You’ll be quite tired. I saw you listening to the song of the Earth, a gift from your father—and I suspect you heard the whispers of the deep waters as well. I will only hope that one day, you do not have to bear the burdens of our vision and the markings of such souls. May it be we have forever taken that responsibility.”

“I’d like to learn the how of it, in case it is needed.”

“The knowledge and the prices that knowledge brings shall be yours, but we will still strive to make certain you will never need to use it. You have suffered enough.”

So had they, but rather than say so, I nodded my head in agreement. I understood. In their shoes, I would have done the same. “Thank you.”

“Such a polite little thing,” my father murmured. “Go run along and have your mate take proper care of you. Soon, this journey ends, and a new one begins.”

SIXTEEN

“Eat out of my hand, little vixen.”

Aiko viewed my mother’s decree for rest and food to be law, and before she would allow us to get to the rest portion of our day, she made certain we had a feast capable of defeating an entire pack of Fenerec. The sushi and gyoza reduced me and my fox to drooling, and Aiko remembered Jake’s enjoyment of fried fare, making certain there was a little of everything to appease our ravenous ways.