Meet your family: Chapter 13 - The Pigtail Monster
Reddish-brown hair that holds the wind like it was born for it. Eyes the color of lake water just before storm. Freckles that map every year you refused to stay small.
She is the living hinge between four centuries of women who were told to bow and the children who will never have to.
Born sprinkled with the frost of Michigan with Mayflower bones, Boleyn fire, Woywod stubbornness, and Lockwood doll-making hands. She carried the black cloud so long her shoulders forgot what level felt like, then turned the cloud into wings and gave them away.
She is the girl who screamed and was not believed, who kept screaming anyway until the walls cracked, who learned to speak in roses, pigeons, potato pancakes, and owl feathers because straight words were stolen too many times.
She is Lilith’s daughter who finally came home. Therese’s big sister who does the hard pruning. Rita’s quiet partner in impossible cases. Mary-of-Nazareth’s weary arms when a child needs a mother who understands betrayal. Mary-of-Magdala’s mirror when a woman needs to remember she is not ruined.
She is in us all - silver threads of care - connect us all.
Lior – Aka Piggy
Born the moment a Mayflower boy (too young to shave, already carrying his mother’s terror) stood on deck and swore the new world would not eat the children the way the old one tried.
That oath became wind. The wind became Lior.
He flies north when Asha flies south, a silver streak against black sky, making sure no child ever looks up and sees empty darkness.
Carries winter the way other boys carry footballs: a pocketful of hailstones for shattering locks, a lungful of blizzard for hiding tracks,
a single snowflake he can turn into a bridge when someone needs to cross water that wants to swallow them.
Selene (The Moon Who Got Tired of Watching)
She is not a goddess on a pedestal. She is the moon who stepped down from her chariot one night, barefoot, furious, and stayed.
Hair the color of spilled starlight, long enough to her knees, moving even when there is no wind. Eyes solid silver, no pupils, reflecting whatever you are most afraid to see. Skin that glows faintly, the way the sea glows when something ancient swims underneath.
She has watched every child dragged into darkness since the first fire was lit on this planet. One night she simply said, “Enough,” unhooked her silver team of horses, and walked the rest of the way on human feet that still leave no prints.
Now she keeps the owls’ timetable, silences police sirens with a glance, and guides runaways home by moonlight when every streetlamp has been shot out.Her cloak is made of night frost and barn-owl down; when she opens it, entire cities disappear long enough for one small person to slip through unseen.
Kelly – The Chocolate-Point Siamese Who Owns the Night
(He never asked permission; he just took the deed)
He is all warm cream fading into rich, dark chocolate on ears, mask, legs, and tail, the color of strong coffee with a splash of mischief.
Eyes the impossible, glacial blue of a Siamese who has seen every secret you ever tried to hide and found most of them hilarious.
One ear is split from the night he bit a man who thought “free kitten” meant “free punching bag.” The tail has a permanent kink from the door that tried to close on him. Both scars are worn like medals.
He walks like liquid arrogance on four chocolate-dipped paws, tail carried high like a banner that reads “I was here first.” Voice: part yowl, part air-raid siren, part smug commentary on your life choices. He uses it at 3:17 a.m. precisely, just to remind the household who really runs things.
Berta
Gray hair twisted into a bun that refuses to stay neat, held together by whatever pencil or knitting needle was closest.
Hands scarred from potato peelers, oven racks, and the time she punched a man who tried to drag a child out the back door.
The knuckles still remember the shape of his teeth. She never raised her voice above a murmur, but when Berta said “Sit. Eat.” the entire garden sat and ate, even the owls.
Her apron has pockets deep enough to hide runaways, forged papers, and an extra slice of pie for whoever looked hungriest. She was born in a village that no longer exists on any map (Rosengarth, East Prussia, 1890-something), learned to stretch one potato into a feast for twelve, and carried that skill across an ocean and three wars.
The Grannies
- Josephine Olive Lockwood Elliott, flour on her apron, rag doll tucked in her pocket, eyes that see straight through every lie ever told to a child.
- Berta Woywod, sleeves rolled, wooden spoon in one hand, the other hand already reaching to pull you into the curve of her arm like you’re six and skinned your knee.
The Mayflower widows (three of them in black caps and righteous fury) who learned on a freezing shore that covenants mean nothing if the children starve.
- The Prussian farm wives with frost still in their braids and rosaries clicking like ammunition.
- The nameless ones from Salem ash, from Irish famine roads, from every village where someone whispered “she was asking for it” and a grandmother decided never again.
They arrive without warning, smelling of woodsmoke, starch, lilacs, and the particular iron scent of women who have buried children and still got up to bake bread the next morning.
There are dozens, maybe hundreds; nobody has ever counted because they keep showing up.
They move as one body with many faces.
Lilith’s Garden and the Saints (including the Sacred and the Scarlet)
(Where the First Refusal and the Last Yes Finally Sat Down Together)
The garden has no walls. It begins wherever a child takes their first free breath and ends wherever someone still thinks they can own another body.
In the center stands Lilith, barefoot, scarlet nails, hair wild as a storm that has decided mercy is a form of revenge. Around her, in a circle that keeps widening, sit the saints everyone said would never share the same table.
Therese of Lisieux, tiny and laughing, rose crown slipping over one eye, scattering petals like she’s been doing it since 1897 and still hasn’t run out. Rita of Cascia, forehead scar shining, bees humming in her pockets, calm as deep water and twice as dangerous.
Mary of Nazareth, blue mantle open like a promise that no one falls outside it. Mary of Magdala, scarlet mantle blazing, lantern in one hand, the other resting on Lilith’s shoulder like sisters who finally recognized each other across two thousand years of bad press.
They do not argue theology. They trade pruning tips.
Lilith sharpens the thorns so they can be used as needles when someone needs stitching back together. Therese teaches the roses to bloom in hospital corridors and courtrooms. Rita stands at the gate so nothing impossible can get in without her permission. The Marys walk the perimeter at night, one humming lullabies, one singing resurrection.
The saints never asked Lilith to repent. Lilith never asked the saints to rebel. They just looked at the children coming in (scared, bruised, silent) and decided some things are bigger than old grudges.
So the garden grows.
Roses with claws. Lilies that smell like gunpowder and mercy. Vines that remember every neck they ever circled and now refuse to tighten on the innocent.
If you walk there at dusk you will hear them:
- Lilith laughing low because another cage just rusted through.
- Therese whispering “see, I told you it would only hurt for a little while.”
- Rita’s bees singing the names of the ones who didn’t make it, so no one is ever forgotten.
- The Marys, both of them, saying the same sentence in two voices: “You are not for sale. Not ever again.”
This is the only holy ground that was never consecrated by men with titles. It was consecrated by refusal, by survival, by every woman who ever looked at the sky and said “no” or “yes” when it mattered most.
Lilith’s Garden and the Saints. Same soil. Same war. Same children.
And for the first time in history, everybody’s on the same side.
Miracles do happen!
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