*Isla*
Poppy gently washes me down the best she can while I sit in my bed, my head still swimming. Mystica is here, too, but she’s not washing my body. She’s checking my vitals and insisting that I try to swallow down some broth, saying, “You’ll feel better once you have some food in your stomach. It’ll help dilute the wolfsbane.”
Maybe she is right, but I can’t seem to choke it down. I don’t know how long I was lying there without breathing, but it seems like it must’ve been a while. It’s like my body forgot how to do it, and now, with every breath I suck in, my lungs almost refuse to do anything with the oxygen, just letting it sit there and build, and build, and build until I feel like I might burst.
When Poppy is finished with all of her washing, she helps me into a nightgown. Mystica is kind enough to turn away, though, at the moment, I don’t really care who sees me naked. I don’t feel like this is my body anymore anyway, so it really doesn’t matter who sees it.
Once I am changed, they slide me beneath the sheets, and Mystica continues to spoon-feed me broth and force water down my throat.
“Can you just put one of those things in her arm?” Poppy asks. “With the fluid and stuff?”
“We could use an IV,” Mystica says with a shrug. “But I think she’d feel better if she just got it into her stomach directly.
Poppy is studying my face, like a mother hen watching over her eggs to see if they are really hatching or if it is a false alarm. Like she’s not sure if I am really alive or not. But I am. I just need some time to remember how to be alive.
“Did you die?” Poppy finally asks me. She pulls a chair from the window closer to my bedside, and I know she has to be exhausted. She’s been under a lot of stress. I want to thank her properly for helping to find me, but I can’t talk that much right now.
Besides, I am still pondering her question.
Did I die?
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “Maybe a little.”
“You can’t die a little,” Poppy says. “Can you?”
I’m not sure if she’s asking me or Mystica, so I turn my head slightly to look at the older woman who is setting the spoon down to reach for my cup of water. It’s ice-cold and should be refreshing, but my throat is as stubborn as my lungs and does not want to cooperate.
“Oh, I think you might be able to die a little,” Mystica says. I finish with the water and she sets that aside to pick up the spoon out of the bowl of broth. “Over the years, I’ve treated a lot of patients who have been near death, especially back during the rebellion, about twenty years ago. That was a time when our kingdom saw a lot of death and destruction. So… yes, I think you maybe can die a little.”
I didn’t know much about the rebellions she spoke of. I hadn’t been born yet—and apparently, I didn’t live in the kingdom then either. My mind wandered back to what I’d seen when I’d been unconscious.
My family… a boat… water… howling wolves behind us.
“The rebellion against King Maximillian,” Poppy said to Mystica. It wasn’t a question, but the healer nodded. “I was just a little girl then, and I lived in a distant area of the kingdom.”
Poppy was from Bridges pack. She’d mentioned it to me before. She lived in an area with lots of beautiful lakes and rivers—near Lake pack and River pack—but since those names were already taken by other packs, when her pack came into existence, they chose to name themselves after the construction projects they’d done around them. They were created from a group of hard workers who were tired of doing the work of others.
In those days, in order to become a pack, a group of people had to partition the king and pledge their allegiance to him first and then the new Alpha. Bridges pack had done that over a hundred and fifty years ago.
And some of the groups that were having trouble now in distant lands were having them because they wanted to form new packs, but Alpha Maddox wouldn’t acknowledge them. He was faithful to the Alphas who had already been put in charge in those areas.
Most of them were loyal back, but I had heard rumors that a few were not.
That’s what had happened when his father, King Maximillian was in charge. Packs had risen up against him because he didn’t want to recognize new packs, and there’d been a huge war over it—the rebellion Mystica was talking about. I knew about it from the history books, not because I’d lived it.
But Mystica had.
“Did you see anything?” Poppy asked me. “When you were a little dead?”
I ran my tongue along my dry, swollen bottom lip. I wasn’t sure why my entire body felt so swollen, but it probably had to do with the poison. My wrists and ankles had been slathered in ointment and bandaged. Mystica was taking care of me. The pain medication she’d given me was also helping a lot. But I was still so tired and out of it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to try to answer Poppy’s question.
I might sound like a crazy person.
Still, I didn’t want to lie. “I saw a boat,” I told her. “And an ocean.”
Her eyebrows arched. “Did you recognize it?”
I nodded. “Yes. I believe it was the boat I got on to come here when I was a little girl.”
“You came here by boat?” Mystica asks me.
“That’s right,” I tell her. “When I was three. We came to Willow pack, to start over.”
“Why did you leave your homeland?” Poppy asks. We have never talked about this before. It has never been important to me before. I have spent almost all of my years in Willow pack lands, so I haven’t really thought too much about my time before that.
“I don’t remember exactly,” I say, but the more I think about it, the more I remember the conversation that had taken place on the beach when I was little. I don’t remember it from when it had initially happened; I remember it from when I was out of it because of the wolfsbane.
I sit up a little as I think about it, trying to draw the memories out. “My parents were scared,” I tell them. “They were afraid that we might die.”
“Die?” Poppy repeats. “From what?”
“From… enemies.” I shake my head, trying to get the thoughts to make sense to me. All I’m seeing are flashes of my parents’ faces, my sisters, the beach, the boat, the sky… the Moon Goddess.
But that part wasn’t real, was it? I had imagined that. Because if I had actually seen the Moon Goddess, that would mean I really was dead for a bit, and I didn’t think people could come back from that, no matter how much medicine they were given.
“What’s the matter, dear?” Mystica asks me. She seems done trying to get the food down my throat. This time, when she reaches for the water bottle, she puts the entire bowl down and not just the spoon.
“I was just remembering… my uncle,” I say. I hadn’t thought about him in years, but I remember now that my parents were speaking of him while we were on the beach. We hadn’t brought him with us. Why not? He had always been a part of my family….
“Your uncle? What about him? Is he dead? Did you see him while you were dead?” Poppy asks me.
“No,” I tell her. “I didn’t see him. I have no idea if he’s dead or not. But, my parents were talking about him while we were on the beach, coming here. I saw the boat in the water, and I heard the wolves howling in the background. They were afraid we were going to be killed… because of my uncle.”
It is all slowly coming back to me now.
“Why?” Poppy is clearly intrigued, like my life was a book or a play. “Why did they think you’d be killed because of him?”
I shake my head. “I don’t remember the details. My mom said something about my grandfather making it so that my parents could be together, but they were afraid because of my uncle…. And then we got on the boat. We were on the water for a long time, then we arrived on land but had to walk for so long. My father and mother shifted, and us girls rode on their backs for a bit, but it was hard for us to keep hold of our bags that way…. Eventually, a nice man gave us a ride to Willow pack, and that’s where we settled.”
“Did you ever go back to visit your uncle?” Poppy asks me.
“No,” I tell her. “We never even spoke of him again. In fact, we never spoke of home again.” Other memories come to mind. “Except… a few times… my older sisters mentioned it, but my mom would always tell them they had to forget and pretend it never existed. Because we could never go back.”
“Because there was a war?” Poppy asks.
I don’t get a chance to answer her. Mystica stands and pats Poppy’s knee. “I think our patient has spoken enough and needs to get her rest,” she tells my maid—my friend.
But I want to keep pushing my memories. “I think there might’ve been a war,” I tell her. “But I don’t know for sure.”
“And… where was this?” Poppy asks.
Mystica sighs. “You listen so well, child.”
What is the name of the island I’d lived on? The kingdom I’d left behind?
“M… M…M—a? Matin? Matton? I can’t remember.”
I look over at Mystica to see her mouth hanging open just a bit. “You’re from the islands?”
I nod. “Yes, but I can’t remember which one.”
She cleared her throat. “I am also from the islands. I fled many years before you were born, but that is why my name is Mystica, because where I come from, healers are revered for their closeness to the Moon Goddess. It is said that our people are directly descended from her, though I don’t think that’s true of all of us, but certainly the leaders.”
“What island are you from?” Poppy asks.
Mystica doesn’t answer her. Instead, she looks at me. “What is your last name, dear?”
I know that answer. “Moon,” I tell her immediately.
She gasps and shakes her head. “No, honey, it’s not. You’re from Maatua, aren’t you?”
I tip my head to the side and stare at her. “Maatua?” I repeat. It comes back to me now. “Yes, I am. That’s how we say it in my language.” I had once spoken another language?
“And your last name isn’t really Moon, dear, is it?” she continues.
I swallow hard, letting her words soak in. Then, as the word comes to my mind, I shake my head and look into her eyes. “No, it isn’t. It’s… Masina.”
“Masina means moon in Maatuatian,” Mystica explains. “And you, dear, are a descendent of the Moon Goddess, Masina Atuafafine.”