Incantation by Alice Hoffman Page B

clouds moved out to sea, far past the island, past the shore and the stones, we would light candles and say our prayers, and no one would stop us. At last we could be who we really were. Some people say,
Save yourself and you save your life.
I say,
Be yourself and you save your soul.

    A NDRES WAITED while my grandmother and I followed the path my mother had shown me. When we reached the pool, we took off our filthy ash-coated clothes. I saw my grandmother as the girl she once had been and the old woman she had become. I helped her into the bath and then I let myself slip into the dark water.
    It was so clear and so clean, as though the pool had come directly from heaven. The stars were caught in the water, like embers. Where we were going, there would be different stars in the sky, so I wanted to remember these, the ones floating in our heaven-water, the ones I’d known all my life.
    Even when I was an old woman, older than my grandmother, older than the oldest raven in the sky, I’d remember everything I’d ever known and seen. The ashes and the burning doves. The look on my brother’s face, the blue dye on my mother’s hands, the color of tears, the gate of sorrow, and the gate of love.
    I’d sit down and make my sons and daughters listen, though we were thousands of miles away, far on another shore.
    Remember what I’ve told you.
    Remember me.