StoryEarth Chronicles

Millie submitted to her mothers’ disciplinary measures. But underneath, her link with the Precinct only grew stronger. She turned her frustration into a campaign of compliance. She performed her tasks with angry precision. I will do everything fully and beyond reproach. As she weeded the poetry and metaphor patch, clearing the row of clunky phrases and dangling participles, she thought, I will wait as long as I have to. She pulled up cuss weeds. Eventually, I will reach the fullness of my two nines, and then I will go. She sprayed everything down with water. I will leave this backward, boring place, and go to the Precinct, where I belong. I will drive a car and party with Players, and…
A presence tingled in her consciousness. She stood up and looked around. No one there. Returning to her work, she opened her backsight for a better view. Kneeling over her work, she pulled up some misspelled words, and then felt it again. Her scalp now tingled with an image. She saw an old woman approaching. Long, thin, gray braids and an ancient, weathered green face. Brown robes. Wrinkled hands with blue veins that snaked up her forearms.
Millie stood as tall as she could given her trembling feet. The woman made no attempt to hide herself this time, but her form was unsteady and translucent. This was the first time Millie realized that shadow women are real.
Her greeting light came up automatically, traveling from within her breast to her hand, and the shadow woman returned the gesture. When the woman’s lavender light swam into Millie’s, the young girl became utterly still. They stood face to face, and Millie wanted to run away, but her feet seemed to grow roots into the ground. She suddenly knew what it was to be a tree. They held each other’s gaze. Millie’s breathing slowed, but her heart quickened. And her mind seemed to have gone into some kind of holy hibernation. Silence. Stillness.
The back door slammed, and with a loud clap, Millie was alone again. As though it had never happened. She shook her head, blinked her eyes.
“The garden isn’t gonna spit the weeds out on its own, Millie! Get to work!” MamaBette was carrying laundry to hang on the line.
Shaken and confused, Millie bent down over the plants and pretended to weed while her mind scrambled, trying piece together what had just happened. She longed to tell MamaLinn about it, but now she didn’t trust her anymore. She returned to her task, feeling MamaBette’s eyes on her as she sent her questions into her work. Who was that? What did she want? Why me?

For months, that moment in the garden hovered in the fading margins of her days. She would awaken with a pounding heart, troubled and impatient, wishing she could see the shadow woman again. Hoping she wouldn’t. She learned in Circle Teachings that shadow people don’t show up for no reason, but that the reasons were never the same from one person to another. The elders admitted that all their knowledge about “the shadows” was useless, because their very nature was shifting, ephemeral and imprecise. The best advice in the event of a visitation was to shield up and invoke Oneness.
But Millie wanted to know more. MamaBette had always been a reliable source of Ddrymmian wisdom and lore, so once during lunch, as casually as possible, Millie asked her where shadow people came from.
Bette asked her, alarmed, “Why are you asking about the shadows?”
“No reason. Just wondering."
“Well, we don’t talk about them here. It’s dangerous.”
“Okay, but--”
“SHHHT!” Bette held up her hand in a stop gesture, and Millie went silent. And then she noticed a forcefield between herself and ever speaking about it again. It was almost physical. She found she couldn’t even apologize about bringing it up. Did MamaBette do that?
Bette immediately bowed her head for a moment, murmuring as she moved her fingers together in specific ways. Millie watched her carefully, then looked over at MamaLinn, who seemed out of her depth.
The subject never came up again.
Feeling very much on her own, Millie refined her plan of deceiving her mothers into trusting her again. When the moment was ripe, she would escape.
But as time went by, things shifted. Her mothers watched her carefully, noticing changes that they weren't ready to give credence to yet. Millie was punctual and thorough. She did as she was told and sometimes threw in extra touches. For a while, her diligence had a sarcastic edge to it. But that eventually dissolved as she began to genuinely appreciate her native Ddrymmian ways.
One late afternoon, she was scrubbing pots in the kitchen when Wrem ambled through the door with his friends, Bluke and Riss. Their work coats hung on the hooks at the door, and they smelled of cedarwood and soil.
“Hallo, the house!” Wrem called out.
“Hallo, the boys,” Bette muttered absentmindedly without looking up from her desk. She nodded to Millie, “Take care of them, please?”
Millie left the pots in the sink and began setting out jokes and anecdotes that Linn had prepared for them before leaving. She gave them each a tall glass of iced poetry. Bette stayed at her desk.
Wrem asked Millie, “Where’s MamaLinn?”
“She’s doing a listening with the Rogger family.”
“What’s their problem with her?”
“I’m not sure, but I think she committed the ‘atrocity’ of teaching a little Precinct game to one of their children during a break in the Reaching Ceremony last week. And they thought she was polluting their daughter with Precinct ways.”