Page 33 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland

You know better than anyone else what the voice of your loved one will sound like. If you hear them, you can trust you’ve tuned into the right radio station.

—Evie Oxby, All Things Considered, NPR

Minna wanted to try their experiment in the hideout—it had been Taurus’s favorite place, after all.

Beatrice expected Minna to prop the door of the shed open—it was stuffy inside, still holding the day’s heat, and outside, the dropping night’s air was cool. But Minna pulled the door shut behind them. “If Reno comes home, we don’t want her just popping in to see what we’re doing.”

They didn’t? Why not? “Okay, let’s ignore for a moment that I’m supposed to be a grown-up. If you’re saying we have to hide from the grown-ups, that’s not really inspiring confidence in me that this is a great idea.”

“No! I don’t mean that! She just worries too much. I don’t want to upset her.”

Reno did seem to be a worrier. “Okay. But I’m going on record as saying I’ll shut this down the second I feel weird about it.”

“I get it, I get it.” Minna flicked on the light and went to the cart that held her tattoo equipment. “Here’s a notepad.”

Beatrice dropped into the couch. She held out her hand. “Sharpie.”

As if it were a scalpel, Minna slapped it onto her palm. “Sharpie.”

“And… what’s the thingie I’m going to hold?”

Minna turned to the workbench. “This. Obviously. Coil machine, old-school.”

The tattoo gun was silver steel with blue accents. Its power supply cord dragged against the old red rug as Minna handed it to her, and the barrel was cold in Beatrice’s hand.

She pushed herself deeper into the battered orange cushions. “I’m worried you’re going to be disappointed.” She didn’t want to let Minna down, but hey, with all she’d learned, Beatrice felt a solid five percent hopeful that this would work. Maybe six percent. Better than zero, right?

“Aunt Bea. Haven’t you figured out that I’m disappointed, like, all the time?”

Oh, crap.

Minna’s face, though, was twisted in an almost-laugh.

“You’re kidding.”

A three-quarter smile broke through. “I’m almost sixteen. Mom says it’s my job to start being more disillusioned soon, and while her attempt at reverse psychology is kind of adorable, yeah, I can admit that I’m only disappointed like once or twice a day, max.”

“That number might rise.”

“It might,” Minna said with equanimity. “But right now, I’m just happy you’re going to try. Oh! The incantation! We need the grimoire! Do you have it with you?”

Beatrice tightened her grip on the tattoo gun. “I left it in my bag in the house. But I think I remember the words.” Ha. She didn’t think, she knew she remembered the words. She could have recited them backward.

“You sure? Gran says it’s better to read from something than to risk screwing it up.”

“I’m good.”

Minna’s eyes brightened as she sat in the rattan chair opposite. “I’ll shut up now.” She mimed locking her lips closed.

Shutting her eyes, Beatrice sat up as straight as she could, the tattoo gun firmly held in her left hand. She took one long breath in and let it out again. Just as she had last time, she imagined the fountain pen fitting into that old-fashioned padlock.

Then she said the words of the spell out loud.

She opened her eyes and held the Sharpie over the blank page with her right hand.

Nothing came to her.

No words at all.

She took another breath as she poked around inside her mind, but found it curiously blank. She supposed she could make up some words. Didn’t every girl simply want to hear loving words from her father? Surely Minna would eat up anything she wrote. I’m close by. I’m proud of you.

Crap, what if the treacherous thought was written on her face?

She couldn’t do that to Minna.

So this was what happened when she finally decided to believe in magic? It ceased to exist? What a cruel prank. She shouldn’t have—

The tattoo gun jumped in her left hand. “Fuck!”

Minna jumped. “Did you do that?”

The gun was buzzing now, jittering against Beatrice’s palm. She dropped the Sharpie and grabbed the tool with both hands. “I don’t—I don’t know!”

“It’s—it’s not connected to the power supply.” Minna kicked at something that looked like a foot switch, which wasn’t plugged into anything at all.

Then the buzz finally rose in her ears, as it had in the cemetery. She set the gun down on the rug, where it immediately quieted, and picked up the pen to scratch the itch flaring under her skin. Only writing would soothe the wrenching ache that curled inside her wrists.

She wrote.

Time moved and stretched around her as the hum turned to a kind of strange ocean song, roaring against her eardrums, enchanting and exhilarating and somehow instantly recognizable, as if she’d always known this song, this movement, this need.

She heard a quiet pop . And she was back.

“Auntie?” The raw hope on Minna’s face was terrifying in its immensity. “Did it work?”

“Hang on.” She needed to read it first, to make sure there was nothing in it that might hurt Minna.

My darling. I can’t believe you’ll get to hear me—I’ve been trying to reach you for so long—can you really hear me this way?

My darling one, you must know, first, how much I love you.

When I first held you, I told your mother that you were the only reason I lived—millennia of ancestors, all of them leading straight to you.

The first man who held fire in his hand, the first woman to give birth and create language with the sole intention to proclaim aloud she loved her child—all of history has led to you.

I’m sorry I had to leave you so early. I’m right here, just around the corner, trying to get back to you, always.

“Oh, Minna. Come look.”

Minna hurled herself at the sofa, pressing her body against Beatrice’s side.

Then she made a gulping noise as tears ran down her face. “Mama said that. That he said the earliest cavemen had evolved just so she could give birth to me. You couldn’t have known that. She didn’t tell you that.” A pause. “Did she?”

It was somehow comforting to know that Minna, too, wanted proof. “No. I didn’t know that.”

“It was him.” Minna stroked the page. “Daddy was here. He is here.”

“I…” She didn’t know what to say next.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t. This is the best day of my life .”

“I’m so glad.”

Minna jolted, as if she’d remembered something. “You can’t tell Mom, though.”

“Wait. What?” Not that Beatrice had been planning to run straight to Cordelia to tell all, but Minna not wanting her to made her feel like she probably should.

“Or Gran.”

“But this is a good thing, right? Exactly what you wanted. Don’t they deserve to know?”

With horror in her voice, Minna said, “ No. ”

“Tell me why not, then.” And it would have to be a really good reason.

“It’s not a big deal.”

Oh, yeah, there was more here. “That’s what people say when things are a very big deal.”

“I just… I don’t know if you want to hear this.”

Beatrice turned to face her more directly. “Try me.”

“Mom’s cool. You know? You know. But she’s not always that cool.”

“Am I going to have to pull this out of you splinter by splinter?”

“Sorry. Okay, when I came out as trans to Mom, she didn’t get it. She didn’t believe it.”

“Oh.”

“I knew Gran would be a problem, because that’s, like, printed on the box she comes in, you know?

Gran has opinions, and she doesn’t care who knows.

But Mom—it was so bad. So hard. She’d always talked this big talk, like love and tolerance for all.

She made rainbow yarn displays during Pride Month, that kind of thing.

That was before I came out, though. When it came to me, and who I was, she just kind of refused to see me for a long time. ” A deep sigh. “A really long time.”

Well, damn. Beatrice would have bet good money that Cordelia had been the kind of mother who’d said, “Really? How wonderful. As if I couldn’t love you more,” before gathering Minna to her chest and ordering Protect Trans Kids T-shirts for the whole family.

Beatrice had mentioned Iris to Cordelia a few times, calling her “my ex.” Had Cordelia needed to guard her expression when she’d learned her twin was bi?

That thought hurt.

“How long did it take for her to come around?”

“About six months. Me running away helped.”

There was so much family history Beatrice didn’t know, wasn’t there? “Where did you go?”

“Just to Portland. I didn’t have a place to go, and the shelters were okay, but there were some super-skeezy people in there, so for most of those months, I usually slept in this abandoned house with some other kids.”

“Jesus! How old were you?”

A shrug. “Twelve. It was fine. And when Mom found me, she was beyond pissed but it really chilled her out, so it was worth it. Oh, my god, your face! Nothing that bad happened.”

Beatrice wanted to roll Minna in bubble wrap, leaving just her head poking out. If that’s what she wanted to do after knowing Minna for fourteen days, how had it felt for Cordelia? “But what does that have to do with your dad?”

“She has this stupid belief that the people we love most are the ones we shouldn’t hear from once they go through the veil, or we risk never letting them go.

I get that. But it’s not fair—she got plenty of time with him, and I got none.

She thinks if I obsess over him, it’ll be bad for me and my ‘psychosocial development.’” She put air quotes around the last two words.

“I just don’t want her overreacting again, like she did when I came out. That was really hard.”

The catch in Minna’s voice ripped the air from Beatrice’s lungs. “I get that.”

“But…”

“What?”

Minna’s voice was so thin, Beatrice had to strain to hear her. “But he didn’t say if he’s okay that I’m a girl.”

“Oh! No, Minna, he said he loves you. That came through really clearly, didn’t it?” A ghost told a girl he loved her using my hands to write his thoughts. Would Beatrice ever get used to this? Would she have time to?

“He was talking about me as a baby.”

“He said he’s with you now, though, so I’m guessing he probably noticed your gender. Or maybe genders don’t matter where—where he is?” Wherever the fuck that was.

Her niece turned her wide wet eyes to her. “Could we ask him?”

She took a deep breath. “No. You have your answer. He told you he loves you now. Sometimes answers take a form that’s different from what we want, but that’s not less of an answer.”

Minna laced her fingers together under her chin. “Please? Please? ”

Beatrice had no skills at this, zero parenting techniques, no resources or muscles built up that would help her refuse this girl. “I’m sorry. No.”

Minna grabbed the tattoo gun and thrust it at her. “I knew using this would work, and I was right. You have to.”

Beatrice shook her head.

Minna dropped the gun into Beatrice’s lap.

And it twitched again.

Minna saw it jump. “Auntie Bea!”

Beatrice breathed, trying to recapture her resolution, her firm no , but it felt far away. Instead, she imagined the tip of the pen entering the keyhole, thought about the tumblers inside it moving.

She thought the words of the spell, hearing them inside her head, stuck like an advertising jingle.

The tattoo gun twitched harder, still open to whatever it was channeling. It still had something it needed to say.

Fine. There was obviously something going on Beatrice didn’t understand. Without looking at Minna, she picked up the tattoo gun, ignoring Minna’s quick indrawn breath.

Should Beatrice address Taurus directly? “Your daughter wants to know—do you accept her as the girl she is proud to be?”

The hum built inside her, and it was almost as if there was a flavor to this feeling, or a scent just beyond her nose’s ability to comprehend.

Taurus was here—she recognized the same feeling she’d had just a few minutes before.

He gave her the same impression, as if she were shaking hands with someone in a dark room.

Just as she’d know her father’s own handshake even if blindfolded, just as she’d know Grant’s, and Iris’s, she was now learning Taurus’s.

The tattoo gun whirred, as if in confirmation.

Then something ripped the gun out of her hands and hurled it through the air, violently smashing it against the wall.

And the buzz growing inside Beatrice changed—the feeling of Taurus was gone, a thicker, bleaker something backfilling into the space where he’d been.

The vibrating drone went dark and cold. The noise of it spiraled upward as a tornado crashed through her mind, her thoughts buckling into rubble at the sound of a thin scream.