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BY THE TIME I get back to the room after my morning class, the clenched fist of regret in my chest has loosened. I set my book bag down and pull out my mother’s velvet box, place it on my bed, think of my father’s face and words.

Make it about the love.

Could I do that? Really? As soon as I try, I miss her. I miss her voice and her smile. I miss hugging her and feeling whole.

I look down at the box again and feel ready, pick it up. “Make it about the love,” I murmur.

I take a deep breath, flip open the lid—and the room fills with mage flame.

Silver and gold smoke dances up the walls and floods the ceiling with light. Everywhere the flame touches my skin feels like the caress of her hands. My nose fills with the scents of verbena and lemon, bright and sharp and warm. I’m on my knees before I know it, hands shaking.

Inside the box my mother’s charm bracelet is pulsing like a heartbeat. When the tips of my fingers touch the gold links, a voice echoes in my mind.

“Bree…”

I drop it. I’m gasping, choking, sobbing. “Mommy…?”

As soon as I lift the bracelet and grasp it in my hands, my eyes flutter shut.

A memory takes me over.

We are on the lawn outside the fairgrounds. I bounce up and down with unrestrained glee, because today is the first time I’ve gone to the fair. Ever. Faint screams of joy rise and fall in the background in time to the roller coaster and Tilt-A-Whirl. I can already smell the deep-fried Snickers bars. The sweet, hot scent of funnel cake is so close, I can almost taste the powdered sugar.

I remember this. I was seven. The annual state fair was a monumental experience, one my friends spoke of in excited, envy-inducing whispers. But I don’t remember my mother guiding me to a bench outside before we went in. In the memory, she wears a loose white button-up blouse under a lavender cardigan. Her straight hair is pulled back. Our shared strong jawline is lined with tension.

She sits down across from me and rubs her palms down her pants.

“Just for a minute, I promise. Then we’ll go inside.” My mother’s eyes flick over my head, like she’s looking at someone behind me. I turn to follow her gaze, but she presses fingers to my chin and turns me back. “Look at me, Bree. Then we can go inside and get fried Twinkies.”

“Okay!” I say, and bounce again.

My mother pushes out a short, fast breath, and her gaze sharpens on mine. “Mommy has to say something hard to someone else, like a speech, but I need your help practicing first. Is that okay? Will you help me practice? Mommy’s going to say a lot, and I just want you to listen for now, okay? Like the silent game.” I nod, and she reaches for my head and pulls it gently down so she can kiss the crown of my hair. “Good girl. Thank you.”

In the memory her eyes glisten with emotions I’m too young to parse, but now I can see the determination there, and the fierce pride.

“Okay, here we go.” She takes a deep breath. “Bree, if you’re seeing this again, it’s because I’m not with you.”

My younger self opens her mouth to ask what she means, but my mother shakes her head. “Silent game, remember? I’m just practicing. I know it’s confusing.”

I nod again .

Just practicing.

“I am so, so sorry, because the pain you’re in right now is pain I know well, and I hate that I’ve caused it. I hope my old charm bracelet gives you some comfort. You can’t stop sneaking into my room and playing with it at the moment, so I told your dad that I wanted it to be yours one day. I hope he gave it to you right away, but knowing him… it might take a while.”

My mother smiles fondly, but I can see the sadness there. An awareness of what my father would go through after her death. She knew she would die.

She sits back and takes another fortifying breath. “I’m going to tell you what my mother told me. Bree, we descend from a line of Rootcrafters. Black folk who can borrow power from our ancestors and use it to heal, or to speak to the dead, or protect others, or divine the future, and more. I use my power to manipulate plant energy for healing and medicine.”

I can’t help it. I interrupt her. “Magic? Like spells?”

“Not spells.” She presses a thumb over her laughing mouth. “Just listen for now, okay? Do that for Mommy? Usually, I would be the one to help you with your Rootcraft, just like your grandmother helped me with mine, and her mother helped her with hers, but things are”—she looks away for a moment, shakes her head—“different for you than they were for me. As far as all practitioners know, if a child has a branch of root, that branch—that gift—manifests early. Five, maybe six, with some small, accidental crafting. That’s how it happened to me. It’s how it happened to your grandmother. When you turned six, I took you to that nice woman who lived in the country. Do you remember her? Ms. Hazel? She has a special gift too, where she can see light and energy around someone. I asked her if she saw the craft in you, and she didn’t.”

I make a sad face and cross my arms. This speech sure seems like it’s for me.

“Believe it or not, not having root isn’t a bad thing for our family,” my mother says with a wry smile. “I thought maybe our string of bad luck was broken. I’m still holding out hope for that. I want nothing more than for you to have a happy, healthy, normal life.

“But…” She sighs, and her eyebrows draw in tight. “I’m telling you all of this now as a fail-safe—a ‘fail-safe’ is a plan, B, like ‘just in case’—because, up until now, the women in our family have never been just regular Rootcrafters. We have something else even more special inside us that we keep secret just in our family. A gift that only we know about, because other Rootcraft users wouldn’t like what we have.”

Bloodcraft. She means Bloodcraft.

She takes another shaky breath and grabs my hand, leaning down to fix me with a stare. Her dark eyes bore into mine as if I’m an adult, not a child.

“Bree, if you’re hearing this a second time, then you already know what I’m talking about. The subtle, persistent abilities, like the one you just used with my bracelet: enhanced sight that lets you see things that other people can’t. A heightened sense of smell, touch, hearing, even taste, when it comes to the root in our world. Certain enchantments that work on other people won’t work very well on you, if at all. These passive abilities allow us to detect an encounter with root—or magic, or aether, or whatever another practitioner may call it—and avoid it, if you choose to. And there’s nothing wrong with that, Bree, nothing at all, because the most important thing you can do in this world, the most necessary thing, is to survive it. You can’t do anything for anyone else if you don’t take care of yourself first. Do you understand me?”

Small me has gone still, but I nod.

“Good. Now, I think of these abilities like fight or flight. This first group allows you to flee if you need to, but if you choose to stand your ground, if you choose to fight… well, our gift will help with that, too. But before I talk about that, I want to talk about the cost of these abilities. The reason we don’t tell other Rootcrafters what we can do is because this power was done through Bloodcraft—where power was taken forever, not borrowed. Someone, somewhere in our bloodline, bound all this power to our bodies, Bree, and I don’t know who or how. Your grandmother didn’t know either. As best we can tell, the last of us who knew where these powers came from died in childbirth, so she couldn’t pass it on to her daughter, which brings me to my next point.…

“The reason they call Bloodcraft a curse is because the universe will come calling for its payment in one way or another. And for our family, that cost is that the power can only live in one daughter at a time. Maybe it’s because all that power burns us out, I don’t know, but none of us get very long with our mothers. Each mother’s final act is to pass these abilities on to her daughter. Which is how I know that if you’re hearing this now, it’s because you have it. And if you have it, I am gone. I know you’re thinking it, but it’s not your fault I left you, just like it wasn’t my fault that my mother left me. I know you have those feelings now, but don’t let them sour inside you. Let the pain be a part of you, but know that it’s not all you are. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

A sob from a small chest. Mine.

My mother pulls me from the bench and holds me in her arms. “Oh, don’t cry, baby. This is just me practicing. I’m still here. I know it’s confusing.”

“I don’t want you to go…”

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here in front of you. I need you to be brave while I tell you the rest of this story. Can you do that for me? Okay? Thank you.

“I said fight or flight, right? The fighting part will only happen when you really need it to, when you’re angry or upset enough and you can’t escape. It happened to me one time and one time only. I saw something at school that I couldn’t ignore: innocent people getting hurt. I made a choice to fight, baby, and it was worth it. I’d do it again if I had to. But a consequence of that choice is that I’ve had to hide myself since then from people who don’t understand who we are or what we can do. And that’s why, if there’s any chance you don’t have these abilities, I’m gonna do all I can to hide this from you. Because if you don’t know any of it, then maybe they won’t find you. Maybe you won’t be drawn to that school the way I was. But that’s also why I’m telling you now, in a way that means you’ll only hear it if and when you absolutely need to understand who we are.

“I won’t say that what I did back then was a mistake. I’d do it again if I had to. I think the mistake was in letting the anger and guilt from my mother’s death soak into my bones so deep that I lost a part of myself. I’m working on it. I’m trying.

“I want you to know that you are the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. You’re already more of a warrior than I ever was. I believe with all my heart that if you want to, you can change the world.”

She takes both of my hands in hers and squeezes our fingers together as if to push her love into me by touch.

“When the time comes, if it comes, don’t be scared. Fight. Take risks. Follow your heart. And move forward.”

My mother squeezes her eyes shut, and when they open, they’re glassy with tears. She looks over my head again and gives a subtle nod. “And she won’t remember any of this until… after?”

“No.” A woman’s voice says from directly behind me. I turn again, but my mother’s hand shoots out, gripping my shoulder hard before I can see who’s there.

“Bree, Bree, look at me, baby,” she says quickly. “Just look at me.”

The last thing I see is my mother, holding me still while she whispers, “I love you.”

I come back from the memory on my knees. All of it, every word and image and sound, is there now, like a file in a drawer. Like something I’ve always possessed but didn’t have the key to open. The flame on the bracelet in my hands dies down, but her message echoes in the air around me. I let the words flow through me and over me until my eyes close and I’m full of her words.

Move forward .

That’s the message my mother planted in my mind for the moment I’d most need to hear it.

When I open my eyes, I know what I need to do.