kamaria volkov / seven. ( fin )

My first memory is of a storm.

When I close my eyes, I can still hear the crack of the thunder, see the lightning flashing before my eyes. I couldn't have been more than a few years old, can still see if I focus hard enough the wooden bars of my crib rising up around me. I remember my laughter, the tinkling sound of bells rocking together in the wind on our front porch. I remember mom coming in to check on me and laughing herself when she saw my wide smile.

"You were born in a storm," I can hear her cooing to me, running her pointer finger down the bridge of my nose. "A full moon covered over by a haze of clouds and rain and horrible thunder. I screamed the whole way through your birth," she said, finally pulling me from my crib and holding me in her arms. "No one could hear over the thunder. It's why I was alone."

I laughed again, like the bells, high and wonderful.

"My daughter, through and through."

I wonder, if I hadn't been born as the world came to blows, who would I have become?

Who would I be?

The first time I hear someone call my mother a witch, I am nine years old and playing alone at school during recess.

At the time, I wasn't sure what it meant, only that the boy had spit the word at me so cruelly that I knew it was unkind, only that I had to spit something cruel back at him. And I had—Ripred, I had. I spit in his face, pushed him to the ground and lashed out with my little fists until he had a black eye and I was sitting in the head office being reminded that "violence is not the answer, Kamaria."

It had seemed like a stupid rule, back then.

I know better now.

I know now that the pink lily-pad looks flowers are called Anthurium, and that if I make someone eat them then their mouth will break out in blisters and they won't be able to eat. I know that Chrysanthemum can make people feel itchy if I use it correctly, and I know that Hydrangea is as beautiful as it is terrible, that if I feed it to someone they will fall horribly ill, they will sweat away their life and their legacy and everything they hold dear until they fall into a sleep they probably won't ever wake from.

I know that the pretty little flowers that grow in the flower boxes on the back of our house are called Mala Mujer, and that with their milky white sap I could blind someone who led me astray.

I know all about lirio de los valles. They are called Lily of the Valley in this language, but mother always preferred the name from the old world, and I agree. It deserves a name as beautiful as it's power.


My mother told me that I was born during a storm, and I have always been determined to live up to my legacy.