Fiction
Mother May I By T Jones
I was given a lot of warnings before I went abroad: don’t go anywhere at night alone, be aware of your surroundings, and don’t shake a stranger’s hand. I promised my parents that we’d be careful, but how different could the witches across the planet be? I’d be in a smaller city than the one I grew up in, and we’d had the same warnings about going out. Lots of media that talks about problems across the world is exaggerated anyway, and I thought I knew better than to make assumptions about people I’d never met. It took a lot of convincing on my end to get Marta to take me with her when we graduated. Her home country looked so beautiful in photos, and she would talk about her friends and the adventures they went on. But nothing about her family, just that they were “demanding.” Most of our arguments were about my prying. She fought me tooth and nail against visiting, but I didn’t let up. I just wanted to experience alongside her the kind of life she had lived. Nothing she could have said would have prepared me for the welcome we got. I thought we were safe. Marta knew we weren’t, and I didn’t want to listen. *** When we arrived, Marta was shaking. Nothing I did helped her nerves at all. I shouldn’t have gotten in the car with these women, but they were so sweet and pretty that I hadn’t thought anything of it. The woman in the passenger seat turned to look at Marta and giggled, a lock of her silky black hair falling away from her ear, accentuating her bright purple eyes. “Y’know, little sister, Momma’s been worried sick about you. You can’t just disappear like that. You know better.” The smile on her thick lips didn’t match her eyes, which stared wide, intensely agitated. “I’m sorry,” I said. Marta whipped her head my way, hissing at me to be quiet. “I didn’t mean to take up so much of her time.” The woman turned further in her seat to lock eyes with me. “Don’t you worry, sweetpea, 20
