TATE SETTLED TALIA UNDER the shade of a squat pinyon pine. The crooked branches spread like bird wings and covered the patch of sand at its roots in a mottled shadow, providing just enough shelter and shade to be comfortable. Tate kicked half-seeded pinecones out of Talia's reach. She knew full well that once her daughter finished eating her sweet cherries and cheese, there'd be little, curious fingers out to find more than just pinecones.

Unhitching the string of bells from Basile, Tate wound them through the pine branches letting the aged fabric and brass chime softly over Talia's head.

Dear friends, Tate thought, repetitiously. We are grateful...She let the rest fade, brief recognition enough to set her mind at ease. Talia was protected. Tate had seen to that, sewing sigils in black thread on the inside of Talia's small chemise under the full moon.

"Be good now, love," Tate said. On her knees, she carved a circle in the sand with rigid fingers—one last trick—yanking her skirts out from under her as she crawled about Talia's perimeter to connect both ends. She leaned in, careful not to smudge the barrier, and kissed Talia's forehead.

Talia sat atop the saddle blanket flecked with stray horse hair. A dark crease ran the width of the rough fabric, marking the fold where the saddle snugged against the withers. She paused on the round, glossy cherry she'd been chewing, mouth juice-stained red, and pressed the battered half to Tate's lips. Tate smiled. Ignoring the spittle attached to the gift, she ate it, warming to the delight on Talia's tiny face. She spent a few minutes each morning slicing cherry stones free to please the baby, and this was the usual reward.

"Thank you, ma'am. Now, stay put."

Tate climbed to her feet and brushed the sand off her hands. Taking up Basile's reins, she led the horse a yard or two by the hackamore to water seeping between rock layers in the gorge wall. A strange thing in the desert, this water. It sprung from an invisible source, dampening rock and darkening moss on its descent. The trickle turned to a steady stream above, falling off a ledge to pool inside a handmade basin at their feet. Hardened clay pitched to catch the precious water in a futile attempt to carve hope from the inhospitable.

Basile lowered his big head. His nostrils flared, enticed by the scent of clean water. He brushed his muzzle against the surface, bright droplets caught on his long whiskers. He huffed once and dipped for a slow, steady drink.

"Thattaboy," Tate slapped his outstretched neck, raising trail dust. She curried his coat with her fingers. They'd shed the saddle on arrival, but the deep sweat stain on the gelding's back was slow to fade. An itchy memory Tate scratched at idly as she surveyed their surroundings. Her gaze moved from Talia, still eating beneath the struggling pine tree, and slid toward the Offering Altar.

The altar was nothing as she remembered. In her time spent lying on it—minutes, hours, days?— she'd been entirely in the Half-Light, not a stitch in reality, and while reality dressed the altar as a red stone table, naturally laid on boulders, waist-high, what she remembered from the Half-Light was utterly different.

On the other side, the Offering Altar grew from the ground like a living thing. A deep, deep mahogany black replaced the dulled color of the desert sandstone. Its surface was buckled here and there by glittering, white stone formations that reminded Tate of the fine crystal glassware she'd once seen on order at the Blackburn Mercantile. Green pine branches and soft elk fur made up a mattress on the flattish top. And off to the left, there'd been a long wood table lit with candles, the scarred surface mounded high by melted wax from one thousand prior uses.

Tate looked to the spot. It was empty now, barely a crooked path leading down the gorge. But that night, the table viewed the altar, food nestled around the wasting candles. No plates or forks or knives or serving platters. Just golden fruit, small tarts, and glazed meat still wearing antlers. A haphazard display for the unusual beings clustered around, licking and nipping the feast, their attention divided between the frenzy and event occurring on the altar itself.

In the Half-Light, the sky glowed late orange, the perfect, constant sunset, and underneath it, splayed out on the altar, Tate gave birth.

She clamped her teeth together. Phantom pain pinched her spine, and she shifted her weight, uncomfortable. The Offering Altar was nothing how she remembered.

Beneath her hat, a tingle rippled across Tate's scalp. Her left ear drowned behind a keen ringing. She reached up, her mind switched focus, discarding all distractions—like laboring under an orange peel sky with borrowed breath—and pulled at her earlobe.

No—Not now, she thought.

Whenever a spirit approached, the hum preceded. The hum, and the sensation of fingers tip-toeing across her dark crown, were signs she'd learned to notice at a young age when seeing the deceased in her bedroom at midnight, or sitting in the stagecoach beside her, became normality. In truth, Tate had half expected the visitation, but every inch of her body repelled the idea.

She couldn't be less interested in speaking with her mother than she was just then.

Chills raced along Tate's forearms, raising the hairs and turning the sweat patches cold. Before she could slam the door shut on her second sight, Aida flickered to the surface.

Her mother's visage was thin. Wearing the impression of a day dress, spanned in a leafy print, she was barely a whisper of form against the rocks and dust of the natural world, like dirt on a glass window pane. Tate could see her clearer in her mind. A near-perfect match for herself, with more wear on the skin and greyer hair. Her greatest regret was bearing a resemblance so closely connected to Aida that any mirror, water trough, or storefront she passed made it impossible to forget the woman. She regretted it the way a young man saddled by a disreputable family surname might regret—she was ashamed. Sadly, only one of those scenarios could be easily changed.

On her darkest days, Tate played with a knife edge, like an idea, pressing the cold steel to the parts of her face she counted least important, wondering how many calm cuts it would take to ruin her mother's reflection. But the vain half of her that enjoyed trailing shirttails on her mother's beauty kept her from finding out.

Aida was slight in life and even less substantial in death. (A trait Tate did not share, her body filled out her dress in several places more than she hoped.) She stood five-foot-nine—a useless fact that brought her joy and one she seemed to have exaggerated in the ether—a long curtain of unruly dark hair laced by grey swayed against her back, and brown eyes critiqued anything in their sights. Sooty lashes clung together, accentuating the enticing heaviness of her eyelids. Her olive skin was tight around her cheekbones and smooth to the curve of her jaw. Severe yet soft. A beautiful enigma born from distant roots in a fraction of land called Tunisia.

Rumors walked down the Rose family line of an Italian garrison and a Sicilian soldier stationed there-in, who'd brought his gifted daughter across the salty belt of the Mediterranean Sea to hide her, thus contributing to the southern flavor of witches that bloomed mysteriously along the Tunisian coast. Four or five generations later, the history was all a bit muddied. No one knew who got what gift from where. Secrets kept too long often forgot their keepers.

Neither Tate nor Aida had seen any shores other than the fabled United States of America. A fantasy land of wild freedom and chance that had drawn their relations across oceans. Aida's mother—Tate had never met her grandmother in life, or curiously, neither in the "after"—was the first to make the fated trip. But she was not the first among the Rose witches to die young. Aida had carried on the tradition in this new, allotted territory.

Something Tate was hard-pressed to forgive. Some footsteps she refused to follow.

Tate stared at her mother's ghost, detached. She might have been looking at an oil portrait of a stranger, taking in the brush strokes without appreciating complexity, without affection. It'd been over a year since they last spoke, over a year since Tate buried her blood-stained nightgown, stitched with her mother's name, deep beside the wooden box at the entrance. Close examination of the wounded soldier tree would reveal fresh scars on the trunk, too: conjoined circles with small dots at the centers and three hash marks. The last element bound Aida to the arid landscape.

Tate took pride in handling a knife, cutting cords, and anything else, with confidence.

Aida gestured with both hands; her oval lips moved frantically, but no sounds crossed the barrier Tate held between them. It wasn't for lack of trying. Tate could feel the usual tiredness move into her bones. Unfortunately, it took more energy to refuse a spirit access to her spiritual periphery than it did to deliver the dead's messages.

But then Aida pointed. One long arm extended toward the pinyon pine. Her slender index finger was rigid and sure.

A rush of fear hit Tate full in the chest. Her mother's voice shrieked into existence:

Tatiana Rose, the child.

Tate was already in full sprint. The pine tree stood alone, half-eaten cherries scattered about its roots in place of fallen pinecones, an empty saddle blanket cozied in its shade.

Talia was gone.

A/N: Thank you for reading!