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“Scarlett,” she said. “Again?”
Scarlett’s hand fell to her flat stomach, and she nodded with a smile. “I’ll need another ribbon.”
The woman chuckled. “It would seem our Tomas is making good on my orders. The others?”
“Healthy. Robust. But Brinna never cries. Is that… normal?”
“And that is your only complaint? Is she eating?”
Scarlett nodded and smiled. “She is a fat thing. Happy.”
“Then all is well.” The beautiful woman held out her hand. In her palm was a swirling light twisted up with violet iridescence. It shimmered until it became what looked like a ribbon—a red one, in her open palm. “You remember the spell?”
“Yes, Baba.”
Brinna lifted her wrist and looked at the ribbon tied there—a ribbon she couldn’t remember ever being without. When she looked back at the dream, the beautiful woman was now old and bent. Her white hair was a ratted mess upon her head, her body clothed in rags. She leaned against a wooden staff in her hand.
“And what will break it?”
Scarlett nodded. “Yes. I remember. It will be sometime before that happens. They are small,” she said. “Maybe he’ll stop looking before then.”
Baba harrumphed and shuffled to a rock, where she sat. “You tell yourself that, Scarlett, if it makes you feel safer behind your hedge. But the throes of true love will come before you are ready for them, and it will be as if you have built a house of cards.”
The hand-painted forest blew away as if it were a house of cards, leaving the two women amid a blank canvas of gray. Baba still sat as if on her rock, cane in hand, though Brinna couldn’t see that there was a rock there holding the old woman up any longer. Her mother stood facing the woman.
“There isn’t another way,” Scarlett said.
“There is always another way, child. This path–” Baba sighed and shook her head. “I see sadness on the road before you. You will try so hard to control…”
“Safe. I’m trying to keep us safe.”
“You will lose them.”
“How can you say that?”
“Look in your heart, Scarlett. You aren’t without power. It will tell you.”
“The magic is gone.” Threads of light exploded from Scarlett like yellow ribbons, five of them, and at the end of each satiny thread, a beating heart.
“That isn’t the power to which I refer. Besides, magic is never gone. You’ve just given it away. But seek your heart–”
“A mother?”
The old woman nodded. “That will never be removed from them. From you.”
Scarlett covered her face with her hands. “I need to keep them safe.”
The dream slammed shut, everything disappearing into the black as if Brinna had closed her eyes, shutting it out. She came back into consciousness, removed her hands from her mother, and fell back. “What does it mean, Mother?”
The world around her faded into gray once more, leaving Brinna to cling to that tether. She considered what she’d seen, unsure what was real, what was a symbol, and what was dream logic. She didn’t know how to decipher any of it.
“Lucian?” she called out, testing the vibration of their shared web.
But there was no answer.
With a sigh, Brinna entered her mother’s chaotic dreams once more, hoping to find the answers she needed. There, at least, she would remain safe from the Deep Gray.
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