Grave Matter

by Karina Halle

“We have a saying here,” she says softly. “Don’t try to change the lodge. Let the lodge change you.”

See, boys are allowed to be mad scientists. But when women do it? We’re simply labeled crazy. And even at eight years old, I knew there was a difference.

Grief is funny like that. It lives alongside you, sometimes in silence, and then a random thought, or memory, or smell will punch through you like a fist, your bleeding heart in its grasp, and you have to relive it all over again. I often think of grief as a cycle from which there is no escape, an ouroboros, a snake of sorrow eating its tail.

Standing beneath the cedar, lit only by the burning ember of a cigarette, is a shadowy figure. I can feel their eyes on me, even though I can’t clearly see who it is. They watch me, unashamed, unabashed. Until they slowly turn and walk away. And only then do I recognize him. Kincaid.

But he is my doctor. I am his patient. He is my teacher. I am his student. He says he’s the one keeping me safe. But every moment I’m with him, I feel I’m one step closer to danger.

It’s hard to ignore death when so many people have died here. I push those thoughts out of my head. Perhaps I’m too morbid for my own good.

“Because you are my future, Syd,” he says, his voice low and gruff. “Because that’s all there is. The past doesn’t exist anymore. Only now and tomorrow is what does. And I want you—now and tomorrow.”

“Connecting the living world with the world of the spirits. A mediator between life and death.”

“I’m staying for you, sweetheart,” he says, grabbing my hand and holding it up to his mouth, pressing his lips against my skin. “I’m burning up for you. You’re my fever, Syd. No cure.”