“Arista, I don’t have good news.” The doctor came into the cold but well-lit exam room and stared down at me over the rim of his glasses. A man in his early fifties, with graying hair and kind eyes, he looked at me as though he was studying a bug.

“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice shaking with fear. Was it incurable cancer? Was I going to die?

“The tests all came back normal, Arista. Technically, there’s nothing wrong with you.” His voice was calm, but I could see his confusion.

I pushed honey-colored hair out of my brown eyes and stared at him. Again? This was happening again?

“But, you said you’d figure it out for me, Dr. Chang. You said you’d fix me when nobody else could.” I tried to blink away tears but one fell anyway. I swiped at it like a child, hurt, angry, but most of all scared.

“I did promise that, Arista, and if I can figure out what’s wrong I will fix it, but I don’t know what else to do. I think, perhaps, we need to send you to a specialist or two.” His shoulders slumped, and I felt sympathy for the good doctor. He’d tried.

He’d been my last hope, a man who had performed miracles for others, but he couldn’t perform one for me.

“I’ll think about it, Doc. Thanks.” My own shoulders slumped. My illness sapped my strength but the doctor’s news had defeated me.

I was going to die before anyone figured out what was wrong with me.

“Don’t lose faith yet, Arista. Wait and see.”

He didn’t understand how most of my life was spent waiting. I waited for the pain in my head to stop so I could take a breath without feeling like my head was going to explode. I waited for my strength to return so I could take a bath. I waited for the nausea to pass so I could eat. Most of all, I waited for the day I’d feel normal again. I waited and longed for that day.

I murmured a thank you and left the exam room. I’d felt so much hope when I walked into the room twenty minutes before. After a year of decline and running out of hope, I’d found Dr. Chang through an online support group. He’d cured so many ailments that had gone undiagnosed that he was becoming a legend. Where other doctors only looked through the most common ailments then dismissed the patient as in need of mental health care, Dr. Chang went deeper and used all the resources available to him. He’d tried to do the same for me over the last month, but as with other doctors, he’d come up empty too.

No doctor could explain my sudden illness: the fatigue, migraines, and nausea that plagued me in the beginning. This had progressed to joint aches, swollen lymph glands, and my hair started to thin. Each day brought some fresh hell, and nothing was slowing it down. Now, as I stared into the tinted window of my car, I saw a woman with sallow skin beginning to show fine lines staring back at me. When I opened the car door I saw more evidence of my decline; my hands had developed the light-brown spots that generally came with age.

I was only twenty-three but looked like a woman in her late thirties, even her early forties, and nobody could explain why. Before my illness began, I’d been healthy, and some people even said I was freakishly strong. I was odd, always had been. But physically… well, I guess even physically I was odd.

People ignored my rather strange affinity for all things steampunk and Victorian, but it had been harder for them to ignore my strength. Even as a child of four, I’d had no problems lifting fifty-pound bags of dog food as though they were little more than a bag of popcorn. I wasn’t allowed to play sports like soccer because I’d forget myself often and shoot the balls through the windows of my high school—a football field away—with the lightest of kicks. I’d learned to hide my strength but now that strength has left me. I thought about phoning my father, but he was on a business trip and I didn’t want to disturb him. As I settled into the car and backed out of the clinic, an old thought returned. Maybe it was genetic, perhaps it was something my mother could shed some light on.

My parents divorced when I was nine years old and I haven’t seen my mother since. Dad was given full custody of me, and because the courts considered my mom crazy, they’d not allowed visitation. I’d learned to stop asking Dad if I could see Mom a year after we moved away from the tiny little town of Drakeville, North Carolina, to the much more metropolitan city of Atlanta, Georgia. He’d get this pained look on his face when I asked, and his eyes would become distant. He’d always tell me that Mom was sick and needed help she wouldn’t get. If she’d get help he’d let me see her, but until then I wasn’t going back.

I’d grown up with only her memory and a lot of confusion. Mom would tell me great stories and we’d play together. She’d never hurt me or tried to take me away. I never understood what the problem was. So she liked to tell stories about dragons, we all have our quirks, right? I missed her, I missed my cousins, and I missed them deeply, but over time, I stopped trying to write her letters because they were never answered. I stopped thinking about her.

Dad didn’t remarry, though he dated sometimes. It was just Dad and me, and after a while, I got used to it being that way. Dad was a contractor, one with a booming business, and most of the time his business partner did the traveling and late-night deals, which meant he could be home with me until I hit my teen years. I was always a good kid, I never caused trouble, and I’d spent most of my time studying things other kids found boring.

I went to college, earned a degree in communications and web design, then started my own business creating online games built around my hobby, mainly steampunk mystery games. I wasn’t rich but I didn’t have to rely on anybody else. Until I got sick, that is. I was still earning money from some of those games, but more and more I had to rely on my personal assistant and team to meet deadlines.

I hit the hands-free button when my phone began to ring and saw it was my dad.

“What did the doctor say, honey? Why didn’t you call me?” His familiar voice filled my car as I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment building.

I smiled but it was tinged with sadness. “More tests, more doctors. The same old thing, Dad.”

I heard him sigh over the line and tried to ignore it. I hadn’t seen him in a few weeks, he’d been working a lot on a new project and I’d been stuck in bed.

“Honey, maybe all you need is more exercise? If the doctor isn’t finding anything, maybe the other doctors were right. Maybe it’s depression?” I could hear the doubt in his voice, the doubt that maybe I wasn’t sick, and it angered me.

Over the last year, I’d been treated like a baby seeking attention, a drug addict seeking her next fix, and a hypochondriac. I’m sorry, but you know when you’re ill and no matter how many times you’re told you need a good dose of lithium, you know that isn’t the answer.

“I can’t believe you said that, Dad!” I was hurt, and I let him hear it in my voice. “After all I’ve been through, you’re going to side with the people that would rather hand out a pill I’ll be on for the rest of my life than cure me?”

“Now, Arista, you know I don’t mean you’re not ill. Depression can do a lot to a person, that’s all.” He sounded like he was trying to soothe a raging bull. I wasn’t quite that angry, but I was upset.

“Like it did to Mom, you mean? You think I’m crazy too, is that it? Well you know what, Dad? Maybe you’re right. In fact, I think I’ll go and find out for myself just how crazy she is. Maybe it does run in the family!” I wanted to hang up on him now that I’d worked myself up, but I couldn’t do that to my father, I loved him too much.

“Arista, you shouldn’t do that. You’ve been gone a long time, you don’t remember what it was like…” He cut himself off, and I knew what he’d left unsaid. Mom was insane, she believed dragons were real, he’d saved me from her lunacy.

I wasn’t going to listen to it anymore.

“I’m a grown woman, Dad. I think it’s time I see for myself just what kind of crazy Mom is. I’ve made up my mind. I’ll call you before I leave.”

But I didn’t call him, I knew he’d just try to stop me. I packed a bag with the idea I’d head out that night but sat on the couch for a break and fell asleep. That was part of the problem with my illness, I grew tired very easily and the day had worn me out.

I woke up just as the sun began to rise, grabbed my bag, and headed out. I set up the navigation on my car and drove to the little village in North Carolina where I’d been born. I’d often looked it up online and knew the sad circumstances of the place. Once a farming community, Drakeville turned into a tourist beacon known for its forests and waterfalls, and for being near one of the tallest dams on the east coast. There were a few die-hard Christmas tree farmers in the area, but not as many as there used to be, from what I read.

My mom’s family had all been farmers, but Mom had escaped long enough to meet Dad at a university in Asheville before coming back home with a husband and a baby on the way. They’d both dropped out of school and lived in Drakeville, getting by, until Dad finally left Mom. I had no idea what Mom did now or even where she lived for sure. I knew in a village of 283 people one person would have to know her at the very least and would be able to tell me where she lived.

Maybe I even had cousins still living there? I hoped Willow was still there. She’d only been a few months younger than me, and I’d cried for her as much as I’d cried for my mom when Dad first took us away. We’d been inseparable from the time she came along, and people had often thought we were sisters. I could still remember her laugh and how we’d spent so much time giggling over boys and planning out our futures.

I drove for a little over three hours, heading north and slightly west into the Great Smoky Mountains. I saw some breath-taking views as I followed my sat-nav onto a scenic skyway, as the signs read. It didn’t escape me that when we’d left only fourteen years before, cell phone towers didn’t exist in the tiny village and the internet was only available to those that could afford a satellite package. I wondered if it was the same now.

I was near exhaustion when I drove into the village. I think every resident in the place turned to stare at me as I made my way to the only gas station on the one-way street. I stepped into the tiny shop and asked the woman there if she knew my mother.

“Eve? Of course, I know Eve. Why do you want to know where she lives?” The wizened face of the older woman with long gray hair combed tight against her head was twisted into a suspicious, squinty-eyed look that made me feel like I was guilty of some unknown crime.

“Well,” I started quietly, my fingers twisting together as I looked around for something cheap to buy so she wouldn’t be mad at me for just asking directions. The woman looked as though she very rarely smiled and that made me nervous. “She’s my mother and I haven’t seen her in a while. I’m not, well, I’m not exactly sure where she lives.”

“You’re Arista? Why, girl, you’re all grown up! Let me look at you!” The woman came around the counter separating us, her face now a wreath of smiles. She was missing a few teeth, but she wasn’t so intimidating with a smile on her face.

I looked at her tentatively, not sure who she was. A relative maybe?

“Girl, I haven’t seen you since you was a little nipper! Look at you! Oh, now, I’m just going to have to see Eve’s face when she sees you! She’s waited so long to see you again! Come on, I’ll lock the door and I’ll take you up there. I’m Anne, your mom’s cousin on her mom’s side. I guess you don’t remember me?” Her blue eyes looked at me for a moment, hoping for recognition, but I couldn’t remember her at all.

“I’m sorry, it’s been so long…” I was trying to be polite and not hurt her feelings. “I’m sure it’ll come back to me.”

“Oh, don’t you worry about it girl, we’ll all be familiar faces soon enough. Come on then.” She led the way out, locked the door, and indicated that I was to follow her.

Anne jumped into an old long-bed truck with more rust than metal from the looks of it, and started down the street. She turned onto a road I wouldn’t have seen if I’d passed it a dozen times, and we went upwards through a steep dirt road. I knew we were climbing the mountain and wanted to look around, but the road was so pitted I had to keep my eyes on it.

Mom hadn’t lived out here when we left, so the move must have come after Dad took me away. We drove for about ten more minutes before we finally reached the top and I saw Mom’s house. It was little more than a double-wide but it had a nice front porch on it and the views could take your breath away. Old maple trees stood around the place, keeping it shaded, and from what I could see, it was all kept neat and tidy.

A woman sat on a porch swing, one foot reaching out to keep up the motion and I knew right away who that woman was. Wrapped in a red blanket, my mother warded off the chill of the day as she waited for us to get out of our vehicles. She stood as I stepped out of the car, her eyes going wide in disbelief.

“Arista?” I could hear her whisper, and saw the tears in her eyes.

I’d been nervous on the drive up, wondering what she’d think of me, but now all I felt was love.

“Arista!” she cried out as she threw off the blanket and ran for me with open arms.

She was as tall as me and smelled of lemon-grass just like I remembered. I felt my knees go weak as she embraced me in a tight hug, and a sob escaped my throat. I’d thought I’d grown past the terrible pain of being away from her, my mother, the most adored woman in my life, but it all came crashing down on me then. Only now it was mingled with relief. I was in my mother’s arms again and it felt so good.

“I’ve been waiting on you, honey,” she whispered as she pulled away, her own face red and wet with tears. “I’m so glad to see you.”

She placed her hands on my cheeks and just looked at me, and I gave her a watery smile. I was home at last.