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She remains.
Not for anyone to see, not for Agatha to see, but she stays, longer than she intends to. Here by the lake, as Agatha holds her son for the very first time, she remembers words whispered between them in rooms only lit up by shrinking candles, hands touching bellies, and kisses exchanged with nothing but love.
“I’d give you a child if I could. That has your hair and smile.”
“And your laughter.”
“A boy.”
“A kind boy. With brown hair and your eyes. Who isn’t afraid of anything.”
Her heart burns, aches as she sees them. Every fiber of her being wants to reach out to touch him, see his face for the very first time. She feels her fingers tremble and squeezes them with her other hand. As it becomes unbearable to stay, she lets herself be carried away.
Rio doesn’t return. She finds the bodies Agatha leaves in her pursuit of power, but she lets them rest as long as she can. Waits for as long as possible, making sure she doesn’t encounter them at any cost. She cannot bear the sight. She, who has seen more gore, more blood and violence than all of humankind combined, cannot stand the sight of the woman she loves and her child.
Their child.
It takes months. Months and weeks of wandering until she finds herself in a field with a single, tiny house at its edge. It’s past midnight and there is not a single light but the stars above. As she enters through the locked door, Agatha is fast asleep on a low bed without cushions or blankets. They lie next to her on the floor, and on top of them, the baby.
Rio threads lightly. She knows they won’t hear her, won’t hear how her heart, the heart Agatha has put in her chest, is almost jumping out as she steps closer and kneels next to him. Her hand trembles again as she reaches for him and gently touches his forehead. His perfect tiny nose moves as if to sneeze and all of a sudden, dark eyes look at her, take her in curiously. For a moment she fears she will scare him, but he makes no sound. Instead, his right hand reaches for her index finger and grabs it with all his strength. He doesn’t let go until he falls back asleep hours later just before the sun starts dancing with the horizon. She vows to come back. And she does.
At first, it’s only at night when she knows Agatha won’t notice, won’t scream at her in fear of loosing him already. She sneaks in once the last light has gone out. Now and then she will sit on the floor next to the bed, resting her head next to Agatha’s hand, pretending it was stroking her hair before she fell asleep. Sometimes she hums little tunes to the boy. Sometimes she doesn’t dare touching him at all.
He is already taking his first steps when she learns his name.
One day she finds the cabin empty. What few things it held in shambles, furniture turned over. She feels them close by, let’s herself get drawn to them, but she finds only the boy at first. He is quick on his feet, stumbling through a lighter part of the forest, following a squirrel. Rio watches with pride as he explores the ground and quickly gets up after stumbling.
“Afraid of nothing, are we?”, she whispers as he notices her and shines a bright smile, reaching out for her. She tickles his cheek as he stands before her in the last sunny moments of the day. For just a moment she feels whole. Then a voice tears through the leaves, frantic and loud. Worried and beautiful.
“Nicholas? Nicky where are you?”
“Nicky”, she whispers to herself and looks at him.
As much as she wants to stretch the moment out into infinity, she can’t bear hearing Agatha agitated like this.
“Go back to your mama, Nicky”, she tells him as she conjures two white butterflies from her bare hands and sends them down the path to where Agatha is. She watches him as he slowly waddles away, following them.
After this, she dares to visit in the daylight as well. The forest is an easier place to get Nicky alone, when Agatha’s watchful eyes are distracted for a little bit. Sometimes she thinks she almost wishes she is finally discovered. She tempts fate willingly, when Nicky is playing on his little blanket and Agatha’s back is turned to them. Some days she feels bold enough to hold him. Mostly when he uses her to pull himself up and throws himself into her arms. His little warm body feels alive and beautiful as he squeaks and whispers nonsense into her ear.
It's not until he slowly learns to speak, that she feels him seeking her out.
One day she is resting on a fallen tree not too far away from them when he stumbles upon her.
“Eee-ohh”, he giggles.
“Ree-Ohh”, she repeats for him as he climbs on the tree, “your mama will be looking for you soon if you come out this far Nicky”.
“Mama is busy. She’s with the ‘itsches”, he explains and makes Rio help him balance on the tree.
“I see”, she whispers.
“Ee-Oh why don’t you never talk to mama?” he asks, still focusing on his steps.
“Because your mama doesn’t want to talk to me”.
“But mama talks about you”, he bows and holds on to a low branch.
“Does she now?”, Rio chuckles and thinks of how Agatha’s beautiful long hair and soft skin had felt under her fingers for a moment.
“Ee-Oh can you make the flowers grow again? With your green?” He pulls her back into reality.
“My green?”
“Like mama’s purple!” He claps his hands.
How can she deny him.
Where she touches the fallen, dead tree, moss and flowers bloom all around his feet. Tiny mushrooms burst from the dead bark and colorful critters make their way around them. Nickolas stomps his feet in joy, but one of them lands on the moss and before Rio can catch him, he slips and falls. As his little body hits the ground he wails and screams, both out of scare and hurt.
“No Nicky no, you’re fine, you’re fine”, she has him in her arms before she can think and kisses his cheek and forehead, carefully stroking the sore spot on his arm until it disappears. It’s too easy to heal his aches. It comes to her too naturally she realizes.
“Ee-Oh it hurts”, he still cries, as she rocks him and it breaks and heals her heart all the same.
She knows this time she won’t simply be able to appear and disappear, Agatha will hear the cries, and if she doesn’t, Nicky will tell her about the woman in green that makes flowers grow and butterflies dance through the air for him. At least if he hasn’t already. Her thoughts are futile. Because before she can think of what to do about it, the love of all of her existence stands before her, panting, screaming, and crying.
“Let him go! Don’t you dare touch him”, she rips Nicky out of her arms and it’s the single most painful thing she thinks she has ever experienced.
“Agatha, I… I’m not here to-“
“Leave! I want you to leave – you promised!”
“I promised you time, but I didn’t-“
She doesn’t let her finish. Nicky can’t stop wailing in Agatha’s arms, clings to her, but he keeps looking at Rio.
And she nods. This isn’t what she came here for. Not today. She cuts a rift into the air and steps through it, away from them, without another look back.
She keeps her distance for as along as she can. Buries thoughts of them in the back of her mind as she carries out her duties. The image of Agatha, distraught, full of fear staring her down, afraid she has finally come to take him is burned into her memory. A month passes, and then two. Winter comes and goes, a riot over the change of the human calendar delivers piles of bodies to her. Distracts her. For a while. Until she can’t anymore.
She doesn’t dare coming in the daytime anymore, doesn’t even know for sure if Nicky still recognizes her after all these months. Agatha keeps leaving a trail of bodies behind her. Rio can only assume it’s either still to sustain Nicholas or to keep her busy. Sometimes she wonders if Agatha thinks that if she keeps giving her other souls to reap, she will stay away form Nicholas. It breaks Rio’s heart that she thinks Rio would trade the boy’s – her own boy’s life for a million corpses.
So she watches over them at night. Wherever they lay their heads to sleep, she is with them. It pains her to see them sleeping outside even though the days are getting warmer. She thinks about the cabin where Agatha and Nicky first stayed and wonders why they don’t go back. It doesn’t matter. Whenever they sleep outside, she comes as close as she can and makes soft, warm moss grown under their resting bodies and adds dry wood to the fire so that it burns as all through the night. When she is brave enough, she sits next to them, carefully caressing Agatha’s hair, dreaming about the life they could have had.
It's one of these nights, early during the next summer, that she is discovered again. It’s the growth of moss that seems to tickle Nicky awake and suddenly her own bright brown eyes stare back at her.
“You’re back!”, he almost yells out before Rio can signal him to stay quiet. He immediately lowers his voice, “where were you?”, he whispers.
“You remember me?”
“Yes of course! I’ve missed you!”, he smiles, “can we make fireflies again?”
Rio lets out a joyful huff she wasn’t sure she had in her anymore.
“Sure”, she whispers and waves a hand to make him follow her.
Not too far away they find a small creek with a few boulders at its shore. She sits down on one and before she can ask him to, Nicky climbs into her lap. Suddenly her throat feels far too dry to speak, so she quietly takes both of his hands in hers before a soft green hue seemingly appears from both their palms.
“Fireflies, right?”, she asks.
He nods with a bright toothy smile and just as he does, one firefly after the next hovers out of the green magic and into the warm summer night. She makes enough of them appear that their small clearing illuminates and sparkles. Rio watches as Nicholas slowly gets up and dances among them, trying to make one of them land on his hand. She can’t control it when her joy, mingled with her magic, makes flowers sprout and break through the dead earth surrounding her.
Time passes too quickly before she sees how his eyes are slowly glazing over and he begins to yawn, even if he is still in awe of the little critters.
She carefully lifts him up and feels that he has gotten heavier, has grown quite a bit, and comfortably sits on her hip. Suddenly she feels braver than normally.
“Whenever you see these, from now on, I want you to know that I am here. That I am making sure you and your mama are safe. And if you want to speak with me, just get up and follow them for a little. I’ll be there, waiting for you. But we need to keep it a secret, okay?”
He snuggles into her chest, nods, and lets himself be carried back to where Agatha is still sleeping soundly.
It’s almost uncanny how often Nicky comes to visit at night. Sometimes Rio thinks he makes himself stay up on purpose so he can come to her as soon as Agatha is sound asleep. She doesn’t care. It’s never long. Their visits are always too short for her liking, but she commits every second to memory, every touch of his little hands, how he naturally wants to be hugged and snuggled by her.
Summer solstice has already passed when they sit together one night and she hums a soft tune to him, as he plays with a visiting bunny. The question comes all of a sudden but isn’t a surprise at all.
“Rio, why can’t I tell mama about you? She said today that she doesn’t know when you’ll come back for us. I think she misses you?”
Rio swallows hard.
“I don’t think your mama would like it very much if she heard we’re spending all this time together.”
“Why?” he asks first but takes it back. Instead, he asks a question Rio has been dreading for a while now.
“Who are you?”
She has thought long and hard about what to say if he ever dares to ask her. But courage doesn’t come as easily anymore. She still tries.
“A long time ago, your mama loved me very much. And I loved- love your mama too. I’d have done anything for her”, she takes a deep breath, “we loved each other so much, that we wanted a child, a little boy. We didn’t think we could have one, because that’s just not how it usually works, but somehow it did. And then you were born”, she quietly moves a strand of hair behind his ear as he looks at her with big eyes.
“Is that why I have brown eyes like yours, when mama’s are blue?”
Rio nods.
“So you’re my mother too?”
She bites her lip. “I am”, she tries a small, quaint, and hesitant smile.
“I though so”, he proclaims to her surprise and gives her the longest and tightest hug. Tears swell in her eyes as she wraps her arms around him tight and kisses his cheek.
When she takes him back much later than usual, he snuggles his back against Agatha and looks up to her once more.
“Goodnight, mother.”
She kisses his cheek twice. Once from herself, and once from Agatha.
She uses the remainder of the summer to teach him what she knows about the plants that are poisonous and those that taste good when he is hungry. She shows him how all living things have a purpose, and equally how everything that dies is just as much a part it as well. How the flowers she grows for him need soil, and how it is all part of the circle of all living things. She marvels at how easily he understands and only when she feels he is old enough to fully grasp it, she speaks to him about the end of his own life as well.
“Will it hurt?”
“No, no not one bit! And there is nothing to be afraid of. I promise!”
“How do I know when it happens then?”
She ponders it for a second.
“When it’s me that comes, and not the fireflies.”
He nods, thinking about it.
“How long will it take?”, he asks.
“I don’t know. You might feel a little sick, not quite like yourself. When you do, tell mama she doesn’t have to kill any witches anymore.”
“Will mama be okay?”
She wants to lie to him for a second.
“No, Nicky. She’ll not be okay. But I promise I will do everything I can to make it a little better.”
“Will you tell her about our visits together?”
“Maybe someday. When she’s ready to hear.”
She tries to hide a sad smile, but Nicky simply leans into her and let’s her caress his hair.
As the days grow colder, it becomes harder to spend the nights together. And Rio is thankful for it because Agatha has finally found them a little cottage again. Rio sees it for the first time when she collects the soul of the witch it used to belong too. She still steals some nights with Nicky when Agatha is particularly tired and sleeps so deeply, she doesn’t hear them whisper next to the fire. Other nights she hides in the shadows, sometimes sitting next to Agatha’s side of the bed, watching her chest sink and swell as she dreams, and Rio prays there will be a time when she gets to kiss these lips again.
Snow falls and melts and when spring comes her heart slowly feels heavier than normal. She ignores it until she hears him cough for the first time. It’s the first tear she has ever cried, and she hides it from him, comes to visit less so that he is fully rested in the morning, more awake for Agatha to spend the remainder of his time with her.
As it gets warmer they leave the cottage and not much long after, she comes to take Nicky home.