"Troubled spirits are very desperate and they will cook up any lie to get you to be on their side." Granny had said those years ago when she had told her to stay away from the boundary. "If you are not strong enough. You won't be able to resist them. It is safer to never cross paths with a Troubled Spirit, than to hope to escape their tactics. Do you hear me, sweet child?"
Nadia sighed, looking into the mirror, and observing the dark circles around her eyes. This was the second time she was having the nightmare, the second night after her encounter with the ghost.
Ever since then, she had no peace. The words of the ghost were haunting her. Even as she stood in the bathroom, wide awake and in front of a mirror.
These words just kept finding her.
Her fingers parted her red hair and she stared at the silver root through the mirror.
*"My daughter has the most beautiful silver hair. You do too, you are her, I saw it."*
As much as Nadia wanted to ignore those words though, she couldn't get over the fact that the ghost had touched her and claimed to see her memories through that touch.
Could her words be true?
No.
She must have just sensed that finding her parents was something she was really desperate to do.
That wasn't the only thing she had to dispute any form of belief that raised in her heart regarding the ghost.
Lady Kestra had almost killed her when she was alive, also she had said something about confirming if she was as strong as her mother when she had used her essence for a particular ritual. If what she was saying now was right, then she would have never harmed her in the past, also what if the ghost wasn't Lady Kestra?
She would---
"Ouch!" She yelped, moving the lantern away from her face instantly. With each thought, she had been moving it closer, and now she would have to rub honey on the burn, so it wouldn't lead to something worse.
After she had done that, she decided to tell her Granny about everything that happened in the forest. It was better for her to be faced with her Granny's anger, than to let this ghost's haunting voice kill her.
With the lantern in her hand, she headed for her Granny's room. There was no response, when she knocked on the door, but she went in anyway.
Granny could be asleep.
When Nadia stepped into the room though, Granny wasn't in her bed.
Where could she have gone by this time of the night?
Nadia was on the verge of deciding to come back tomorrow morning, when the wall in front of her had rumbled, and out of it had stepped the young woman she had seen in her dream.
The one her younger self had called Mama, but before the shock could settle, something else had happened.
The woman morphed into Granny and that broke a dam of questions and a particular wonder that maybe the ghost was right.
"Nadia?!" Granny was startled to find her little Nadia, in her room. But she hid her shock quickly and tried to make it seem like nothing had happened.
"Are you sleepwalking--" she walked to her and Nadia staggered back.
"Who are you?" Her voice trembled and the sparks in Granny's eyes died.
It was all out in the open now. The only thing that could fix this was the truth.
"Who are you?" Her lips trembled. Her grandmother wasn't a witch, she was a healer with herbs.
An herbalist.
She knew no magic tricks and there was no way she could be shape-shifting?! This just didn't make sense!
"Nadia, my little one. My precious, precious daughter--" Granny said, taking cautious steps towards her.
Nadia observed her subtle movement, and she moved the lantern in front of her, in defence. Her stance promising to fling it on her face if she dared to come any closer.
Granny recognized the threat and didn't make any more attempts to close up the space between them.
She shook her head, the words clashing in her head.
"Who are you and what have you done to my grandmother?" She asked in a hushed whisper, feeling too weak to scream, too scared of anything that had been capable of taking down the strongest woman she knew.
How long had her Granny stopped being by her side, how long had she lived with that thing, thinking it was her? Was her Granny dead?
Her Granny was all she ever knew, even though they weren't related by blood. She was still family.
"Nadia, my little baby. It's is I. Nothing happened to me." She said each word with calmness, like she was trying to nail it to her brain that despite what she had just witnessed, nothing had changed.
"Then, who was that woman?"
"What woman?"
Tears ran down her cheeks. That little denial was making her wonder what else her Granny had denied her knowledge of. Did her parents really leave her at her Granny's doorstep or had she stolen her from them?
Had she been living with the villain all this while?
"Don't lie to me," this wasn't the time to cry but tears welled up in her eyes again anyway.
"Nadia, please don't cry."
"I saw that woman in my dream. Who is she?"
"She is I." Her grandmother confessed with a sigh, and she morphed into the young woman she had seen earlier, looking more relieved than she had before. It seemed staying old had caused her pain. Why did she have to pretend before? Why did she have to lie to her many times that she wasn't a witch?
Was it the same reason why she had told her to always dye her silver hair red?
Was the ghost right?
She wanted to confirm it, but she also didn't want her Granny to know about the ghost. Right now, she wasn't feeling like the closest person to her in the whole of Ignas, she felt like a stranger.
"Tell me the truth of everything, from the beginning."
"Sit down, please." Granny took a seat on her bed, her eyes red with unshed tears. "Come and sit next to me."
"No, thank you. I would rather stand."
"I didn't want you to find out this way." Silence fell between them and Nadia felt like she had aged during those seconds. "You were never a gift in a basket."
Great. The ghost's story was already feeling right.