Chapter Thirty Seven: Speaking in Tongues [Full]

'What's wrong, Nessie?'

Nate comes and sits at my side, squatting to be beside me. I'm curled up at the edge of the green, charcoal nib in hand, seething.

'Miss Thorn told me off for not having a letter ready,' I grumble, staring back down at the half crumpled paper on my lap. 'She shouted at me for not doing my homework.'

'She cares about you,' Nate says diplomatically. For an eleven-year-old, he's wise beyond his years. My own petulant ego can't compete, so I do what most kids do: I stick my tongue out at my twin.

Suddenly, a teacher's voice ricochets. 'Nerissa! Are you ready to put your letter in yet?'

'Hurry!' Nate whispers, shooting the teachers a furtive glance. Around us, the class play on the green, cartwheeling and enjoying their minutes whilst the teachers dig the hole, ready to place a box of letters from our eleven year old selves in.

It's a stupid idea. I say so to Nate, who gives me a bleak look.

'It's actually a smart idea,' he reasons. 'The act of writing a letter to your future makes you think about the future.'

Again, he's wise beyond me. I sigh dramatically, attracting the attention of a group of boys nearby. I'm more interested in catching their eyes than with writing my letter. But Nate is diligent, as always, and he taps the page, bringing my attention back to the present-- and the future.

'All it makes me think about is how much I hate writing soppy letters!' I groan. 'I don't care what my future holds. It's going to be boring.'

Nate smiles. 'You have a strange definition of boring.'

I raise my eyebrows. 'We have school, and then work, and then we work until we die. Voila, complete. Boring.'

'Death isn't boring.'

'How would you know? Oh, let me just copy yours!'

'No! You can't copy...'

'...hand it over! Where is it? Let me see!'

'I've already given it in,' Nate grins. 'You won't be able to read it until you're older.'

I groan again. Today, Nate is really being cryptic. He's usually the dreamer; whilst I live for the moment, he'll be too lost to notice it. Or he'll be noticing too much of it that he's no longer a person but a distant observer, always the watcher and the assessor.

Little did I know how alike we would become.

As I land hard on the grassy earth, I know where the portal has taken me to. One of my last, clear memories of my brother on our first day entering the higher academy, for the bigger kids. Back then, we'd dug an ugly hole into the middle of this unused patch of land not too far from the school. In the years since, the area had become much more sketchy-- first, becoming a graveyard, and now, a hive of drugs and prostitution. The park's real name-- something bland and vague-- had long been replaced with everyone's colloquial nickname, Gods' Green. Apparently, the semantics stem from a long line of hallucinogenics consumed there.

Thankfully, when I land, the air is crisp, clear and with a distinct lull in the darkness. The sun is creeping in the furthest corners; dawn is coming, and with it, most of the humans of the night have fled. Regardless, I glance around to see if anyone has noticed my arrival. The world is silent, sleepy, and there's a low mist over the graves to add to the atmosphere.

My fingers rake through the dewy dirt to shift my body. Rolling onto all fours, I push into a crouch. Mercer is nowhere to be seen, and neither is Hadrian. I'm surprised that an anxious knot forms in my stomach; I'm scared for them. But, now that I'm here, I don't have time to waste.

I tremble as I feel the sheet in my pocket, the paper that has my brother's details on it. They're memorised, lodged across the forefront of my mind like a permanent tattoo. How, after all these years, is Nate's soul still stuck here, a few streets away from where I'd lived?

And why, oh why, is there a figure, over by Nate's grave?

Still crouched low, I creep forward, using tombstones to take cover as I make my way, unseen, towards the small, huddled figure. Who would be here, at goodness knows what hour? My brain is trying hard not to implode with all of the questions firing.

A twig snaps underfoot, and the figure twitches, looking in fear over her shoulder.

My mouth drops. I don't even have time to duck back and hide-- I'm exposed from the shock. The figure sees me immediately. There's no mistaking the tall, long-legged woman with the dull blonde hair, nor the beaked nose that was so characteristic, silhouetted against the lightening sky. I know her face well, although now lines crease across her face, and there are dark shadows beneath her eyelids.

My mother. My mother is standing there, over Nate's grave.

Not my stepmother. My supposedly "real" mother, who left her own children to raise another woman's.

I'm certain that if my mother's only complication was that she'd left my father, I would have forgiven her. Regardless of who she loved, I wouldn't be angry; after all, I can't blame her for not wanting my lousy gambler of a dad. But what I really hate was that she never came to visit again. She never checked on how we were. She never came when we were too young to understand, and still cried out for her in the night. She replaced us with two other children, as though we'd never existed, and it hurt like hell.

Now, seeing her standing over Nate's grave, I seethe. She has no right to grieve for a son she never had. I forget to be stealthy. I don't try to hide. I stand up straight and bristle.

Her face turns white. Really white; chalky, pasty, as though she's going to faint. As I get closer, she steps back, whispering, 'Nerissa? Is that really you?'

Only a few feet away, I snarl, 'I'm surprised you remember my name, Mother.'

She places a hand on her chest, her mouth flapping. I realise that she's muttering some kind of prayer, and I frown. For heaven's sake, I'm not going to eat her.

'G-ghost!' she gasps, her hands shaking. 'You're d-d-dead! I s-saw it...'

There's something so goddamn poetic about coming back to life to scare those people that thought they were rid of you. Unfortunately, there's nothing poetic about the whimpering of this woman, and I'm not sociopathic enough to continue to let her believe that she's going to be cut to pieces. In fact, seeing her terror and the age lines on her face, some of that residual anger ebbs away.

...some.

I raise my hands, sighing. 'I mean you no harm. It sounds ridiculous, but I can travel between...' I stop. Do I say, "life and death", and pause for dramatic effect?

I don't get to wait for an answer, because that sentence has my mother stumbling backwards. 'N...Necromancer?' she gasps. She treads on the flowers she'd laid gently across Nate's grave.

'How do you know about that?' I ask sharply, cocking my head sideways.

She flinches. She's still trying to get away, but her limbs are tangled as she tries to fix the mess she's made over Nate, hunched on the ground. I step forwards, brows furrowed.

'Answer me,' I say, 'How do you know about necromancers? It's too specific for it to be a wild, lucky guess.'

'I read about them!'

Her fingers miss the gravestone she tries to clutch to pull herself up, so she falls forwards. I watch her with disdain.

'No, you didn't,' I say slowly, each thud of my heart pounding into my ears. There's a buzzing in my head, one that's telling me things aren't adding up. Suspicion rises in my gut, strong and foul.

My mother gapes at me, towering over her. A rumbling comes from beneath my feet, like a low growl rising in a dog's throat.

'How do you know?' I demand, my voice echoing. An undeniable rage is building within me as I take another step, so that my feet are crushing the flowers over Nate's grave.

The woman's eyes are popping. The grave beneath me feels alive, and it's as though there's light in the form of threads rushing towards me. I realise that I can Sense Nate's spirit; still here, still curled within the Earth. Tears prickle against the corners of my eyes; Nate's spirit. Nate. He's still as gentle a presence as ever, a steady thrumming beneath my feet.

But there's that thread connecting us that I have to reach out and take. Instead of closing around it, my fingers set off a reaction of blue light. It runs through my veins, lighting my arms, and climbing up towards my neck. As my mouth fills with a fuzzy taste, my tongue twitches.

It twitches again...only, this time, I'm sure I never moved it.

My mother screams. 'Yo...your eyes! They're...b-b-blue!'

I move to fold my arms and say something snarky, only...a great hacking cough seizes me. As I straighten up, my tongue flicks again, and an unearthly sound grates from my mouth.

When I open my mouth to curse , another seizing grips me. My tongue feels as though it's on fire, until, thankfully, I speak.

'M...mother...' I hiss, and a strange thrill runs over me. The voice is much deeper than usual, despite coming from me-- as though I've lowered my normal tone. 'Remember me?'

If possible, my mother's eyes widen even further until she looks like they're about to pop from their sockets and roll along the floor. 'Nate?' I hear her whisper.

What had that book said? The Second Lesson of Necromancy: the Tongue of the Dead.

Holy shit! I'm channelling Nate's spirit!

'You're a lying traitor,' I snarl in a rasping voice that isn't my own. 'You lied to us, and you lied to Dad. Pretended that we were your children, that your real babies hadn't been swapped.'

Oh, SHIT. What?

'I had no choice!' Our mother sobs, and her knuckles are white as she rakes them over her face in anguish. 'Do you think when the Spring Court finds you, you get a choice?'

'You had a choice. You could have loved us. You left us, out of fear of what we were, out of fear of what they wanted you to do.'

Our mother had her own babies taken, her own two twins swapped for changelings-- Nate and me.

No wonder she always looked at us with weariness. With apprehension and hatred. With a deep sadness.

'I'm only human!' she screams, 'Don't listen to him, Nerissa. I can see more than ordinary humans, but that only made me a target for them! Thanks to this power of mine, I got given you two!'

'We were innocent children. And you planned all along to agree with what they wanted.'

There's more? What did she do?

'Nerissa,' I breathe, 'This is who you've been looking for.'

Who? Our mother?

'She's the one who killed Nate.'

--

I have posted this fully because LITTLE SAINT BRIDE IS NOW COMPLETE!

I have finished the whole story (Chapters 38 and 39) over on Inkitt. I am trying to get Little Saint Bride published and would LOVE it if you could vote and read it over on there.

I WILL be posting a preview of 38. I'll be posting the full chapters on Wattpad after Inkitt voting ends (Feb 29th).

A lot of you have already voted but if you love LSB and want to help, please pop over to Inkitt! It's really quick and easy, and I would be forever grateful. Sadly, votes don't guarantee a win, but if the site sees it gets reads and votes hopefully they'll judge it favourably! :)

Thank you so so much for this Underworld journey...! And be excited for Book 2...? ;)

http://www.inkitt.com/stories/52643