Only Saints

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The thing about magic-making is that it works in patterns.

One word is not a spell, not really. Two words, repeated, with force? That's a different matter.

A spell comes to life by kneading air into a lump of dough. A spell comes to life by looping thread through fabric until you've made something that is more than simply thread and fabric. A spell comes to life by digging into the earth, by breaking the roots of weeds, by watering the thirsty to feed the hungry.

A spell comes to life through devotion, and through focus, and through...

There's a third one. I can't remember the third one.

Old Mère's trailer is dark. Everyone is over at Aunt Etta's place for dinner, like we used to do when I was a kid. It feels wrong to push open the screen door. It feels like I'm crossing the threshold between life and something that's not quite death. Forgetfulness, maybe.

I'm so afraid of forgetting her.

When will I stop being the boy that Old Mère raised? When will I stop being Apollinaire entirely, to the point where I can never come back?

I thought I only ever wanted to be Paul. I thought I only ever wanted to sit in an ambulance, to sit on standby waiting for a call, to sit alone with my thoughts and be comfortable in that fact. All my thoughts then were about school, and about work, and nothing about the life that I left behind.

All my favorite shirts have my name embroidered on them. Bright red thread on navy blue knitted cotton. A patch on the shoulder to set me apart from the rest of the world around me. People make way for me when I'm in my work uniform. They step to the side to let me through. They take one look at me and look away, because the bags under my eyes are excused by the fact that I'm saving lives.

Paul St. Rose is accomplished. He's done things. He's earned what little respect he receives.

The air in Old Mère's trailer stirs around me. Crossing the threshold between life and not-quite-death, I'm dragged from my skin and forced to become something else again.

Paul St. Rose has never set foot in this place. I can't let him. I can't be that person here, because that would be blasphemy. It would be a refutation of everything that she ever taught me.

That would be disrespect.

I'm so afraid of forgetting her.

There's a box of fabric scraps still open on her coffee table. My mother and aunts must have been going through it. I sit on the edge of the couch and pull a few pieces out. Some of the fabric is half-sewn, spells not quite given form yet; some of it has pieces of embroidery only just started. I can see her steady hands in the way that each stitch is exactly where it needs to be.

At the bottom is a piece of black fabric with sloppy white stitches running up one side. A practice piece, she called it. Something to get hands used to a sewing machine. It would never become anything—it would never make a shirt, or a dress, or a spell—but that didn't matter. It was there to establish the skills that were needed to create spells later on.

No one would ask me to place an IV without at least explaining the basics of the technology first. Needles. Veins. Placement. Those were all important things to understand. Imagine trying to fix a broken bone without knowing what it was supposed to look like. Imagine trying to judge the severity of a wound, or of an illness, without first knowing what to expect from a healthy person.

Still, my hands shake to hold that piece of black cotton. I should have been better than that. I should have been good.

I pick myself up from the couch. I feel as if I'm bits and pieces, not a full person but patches of one sewn into an incomplete pattern. Someone forgot to add backing. Someone forgot padding. Someone forgot—I forgot—how to be a real human being.