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You are the mother of a daughter, and your daughter has told you about her terrible dream. This is familiar to you, but not from this perspective. You wonder if this was how your mother felt all those times that you clutched her hand as a child and told her about the death you'd seen, praying she could fix it, praying she would believe you.
You don't want to believe her. You don't want to lose your daughter. You can see in her eyes that this fervor for saving the world will consume her if you encourage it, and she's only a child—no, stop, that's not what's happening here. You know that if you accept your daughter's offer, she will stop being a person and turn into a piece of you. That's what's happening here. And you love your daughter. You don't want to do this.
But the story was written years ago. You were always going to accept her deal. You were always going to believe her. You were always going to place this responsibility on her shoulders, just as you placed it on your own years ago, when you ran from everything you've ever known to save your child's life. She is the same as you. Your child has always been doomed, because she was born your child.
When you take her, her shape is familiar to you—you see yourself, see the responsibility you've always held, see the responsibility you've always asked for, and you know this is what you wanted. The part of you that is your daughter would have hated you for choosing otherwise.
You are the mother of a daughter again, and when you take this daughter, and feel her jagged edges brush up against the rest of the parts that make you, this part is familiar to you, too. This is your father saying, Ellie, you don't have to do this.
But he left you years ago. He couldn't bear the responsibility of a dying coparent and a nervous wreck of a child. He wasn't protecting you, he was protecting himself. He was selfish. And the part of you that still listens to him—no, the part of you that is him, now, is her—will never be more powerful than the parts of you that know what your responsibility is, the parts of you that have always chosen to accept it.
You have these visions. You know what will happen. You have the power to fix it. It's a simple calculation; no one person's life could be worth hundreds'. Not even your daughter's.
So you keep having daughters. You keep taking them. You move the mannequins around on the board. You gain power. You arrange everything to your liking. You accept the burden that was given to you know, because no one else could have shouldered it. No one but you and your daughters. And then you are there, on the cusp of the end—no, Ellery's there. Your name is Ellery.
Ellery can't breathe. She's used to this feeling.
"Ellery?! Are you okay?"
Ellery looks up. Kaneeka's here too, and the edges of her are blurring. It's clear she'll fade soon. The Witch will take another daughter, and the disaster will be averted. One last piece locked into place, and she can permanently fulfill that promise to the daughter, centuries ago, the one still whispering, Thank you for believing me, Mom, somewhere deep in her soul where only she can hear it.
No, stop it. Ellery shakes her head, trying to physically disjar the thought. There is no way to know for certain that anything Sybil just showed her is real. What did she learn from Charlie's melodramatic little puppet play? No one's perspective on their own life can be fully trusted, least of all Sybil's. Sybil has done nothing but try to control her since Ellery came to the Holler. Who's to say she's not just trying to control her now?
Ellery gulps in a few shaky breathes, clenches her fists until the pinpricks of pain where the nails meet the skin ground her. She tries to box breathe, tries again when she loses count. She's not sure how long it takes before she's steadied, but when she is, she stands up straight, meeting Kaneeka in the eye.
"I'm fine," Ellery says, and it's even mostly truthful.
Kaneeka's eyes shift, looking around. "How did you get here, Ellery? You're… are you real?"
"I'm real," Ellery confirms. "I don't know if anything else here is. You look—" She cuts herself off before she can say almost gone already. "Kaneeka. Did you see—"
"That whole life story thing?" Kaneeka says. "Yeah, I saw." She shifts, her eyes flicking to the side. "Ellery, look, I know how hard you've been trying to solve the mystery without letting anyone get hurt, but don't bother trying to stop me from doing this. You've done your part. It's my turn to save everybody now, okay? This is what I want."
Ellery feels all that careful work she did to calm herself down start to crumble in an instant. "It doesn't have to be you," she says, talking so fast she's almost tripping over the words. "I don't know what you have that Sybil needs from you, but I have powers of my own. A sixth sense, sort of. I have these visions. I can tell—what's going to happen, where danger comes from, when someone might die, those kinds of things. If power is what Sybil needs, then she can take me instead."
"Ellery," Kaneeka says. "Well, first of all, even if she could take you, based on what she showed us, it seems like she already has the power to see what's coming next. I don't think you would have enough to give her for her to stop everything from happening. And if you alone are not enough, and she's just gonna need another daughter anyway, then it might as well be me." She looks down. "And second of all, I need to do this. Not for her, for me. If I can stop whatever Enoch brought, then my life will have meant something. I'll be something more than a cashier in a small town general store. I'll have saved people's lives." She meets Ellery's eyes again, smiling sadly at her. "Isn't that a nice ending? Don't I deserve to have that?"
"But you have no way to prove that's what'll happen," Ellery argues. "You're a skeptic, aren't you? Even if Sybil's not just trying to deceive you, all we know is what she believes will happen. We have no idea if she's right."
"But if she is right about what will happen, and I chose not to believe her, and then people die, I couldn't live with myself," Kaneeka says. Her voice is wracked with pain. "How could I have that on my conscience? Letting people die all so I can make one selfish choice?"
"Is it selfish?" Ellery's voice sounds faint even to herself. "Sybil doesn't see anyone as people. That's how she can do this kind of math without flinching, this thing where she controls who lives or dies. But you're not a tool for your mother to use. Throwing away your life like that—it's still killing someone, even if that someone is you. You're a person too, Kaneeka."
Kaneeka's eyes look red when they flick away from hers. "So are you, Ellery."
And then Sybil is there, quieting her daughter, reminding her of her role, tightening the threads around her before she comes loose. Sybil's calm and relaxed, and Ellery wants to feel that way, wants to feel that stability. Wants to rest easily, knowing she's made the right choice, the hard choice, and she has nothing weighing on her conscience. It sounds so nice.
But Ellery isn't a child anymore. She's not crawling into her mother's bed at night, begging her to believe all the horrible things she's seen in her head. And she doesn't have a hand stroking her cheek, telling her she's right to be worried, telling her these visions are a gift, that she can use them to save people, that she will have to keep doing this for the rest of her life. This is a different situation. Ellery can make a different choice. And suddenly she remembers, back a lifetime ago in the cell in the Estate, reading the word that could give her the power to change things. There might be a way to make it so that no one has to lose.
Ellery takes a deep breath and begins to unwind the threads.