“And you could all do this? You and Meng? You both have these scars?”

“And your great-grandmother. Your great-grandaunt. And so many before you.”

I was not used to thinking of myself as part of a long line. I had grown up in a totally different country than grandmother and did not have much of a connection to my parents. But for the first time I thought of the chain of people who came before me, who survived wars and more, and I felt a bit braver, a bit surer of myself.

I still did not completely believe what she was saying, thought it perhaps a side effect of her illness. Except then, in an unforgiving stabbing motion, she stuck the pencil into her wrist.

I was beside her in an instant. I tried pulling her hand away. She was surprisingly strong, and I didn’t want to hurt her. I screamed for grandfather to come help, and grandmother told me to quiet down, as if I were throwing a tantrum in a supermarket.

I looked at her wrist. The pencil heart had—I can’t believe I’m writing this—melted into her wrist. And her eyes rolled back, in pleasure or pain I could not tell. She breathed hard, closing her eyes. The scars on her arm pulsed, and for a moment, I saw the phoenix so clearly, dark and swollen. Eventually, the pencil heart emptied, and the wood casing fell to the floor, a husk.

When she opened her eyes, she was looking at me in a way I had never seen before, as if she was seeing past me or through me or maybe into me. And I froze because I could sense it—the pencil had marked my words and, somehow, they were in her body and she knew, she knew everything I had put into that pencil, all my questions and uncertainties, all the unsure feelings toward Louise, the jumble of thoughts I had tossed away thinking nobody would ever see. My story brought back to life. Understood perfectly by the Reforger.

I stepped back slowly. Then I slumped into my chair.