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In neuroscience, there is a documented phenomenon called life review, where your life flashes before your eyes right before you die.

Technically, death is documented as the moment the heart stops beating—but studies have shown that brain activity can continue afterward for seconds to hours. In that time, the brain waves tend to show the same pattern as those when a living person is recalling a memory.

I had read about this even before I became a Harbinger, before I ever stood in front of Raven and pledged myself to a magic that I never thought could exist. But I have not experienced the phenomenon of dying before, not even then. I have only witnessed it.

The first thing I notice is the sensation of feeling lost. I rub at the spot over my breastplate where Laine’s arrow penetrated my chest. But the skin and flesh are smooth, untouched.

The white all around me gradually dissipates, and in its place materializes a scene that evokes a nostalgia so strong that it hurts. The humidity of a warm summer afternoon. The sound of traffic on a nearby street. The smell of leather in the back seat of a car.

This is not a memory I recognize, but I know instinctively that it is mine. In it, I am very young, an infant strapped into a car seat and crying. Beside me, a young woman—a girl—is trying to soothe me.

Her eyes, too, are red from crying.

The car comes to a stop, and the girl’s head jerks up, like a deer noticing a wolf. Her wide eyes follow someone who comes around to open the car door on my side. I continue to wail.

“Let me,” the girl pleads as the driver starts to unbuckle my seatbelt. “Please, just this time.”

The man looks at his companion, a woman who had been in the passenger seat, and she gives him a silent nod. He retreats from the car and straightens, and the girl leans over to undo my seatbelt.

“Hush, hush,” she soothes me as she goes, and I listen, lulled into calmness and curiosity by her gentle voice.

With a start, I realize why I recognize her. My mother.

She loosens me and picks me up, bouncing me gently in her arms, and I feel myself relax, like everything must be fine. When I look over her shoulder, I see that we are in the parking lot of a small hospital.

All my life, I’d been told that I was given up by my mother. Unwanted. But the young woman holding me looks smitten with me, her eyes locked on mine, her movements nervous. She looks like she loves me.

Everything is too real—the tickle of a tag on the inside of my beanie cap, the rubber of a pacifier between my new baby teeth, the fine strands of my mother’s black hair in my little fist as I cling to her. I can feel the ghost of my fear in that moment, even as a memory.

A memory. It’s just a memory. Deep in my mind, I know the truth. I remember that I’ve died, can still feel the pierce of the arrow through my chest, can tell that my body feels numb, like I’m not really here. But I don’t care. I let myself sink into the memory, let myself believe that I’ve gone back in time. Let myself stretch out this moment with my mother as long as I can.

Is this what we all see, when we’re about to go? The hinges of our lives, the pivots in our timelines? Why have we evolved this way? Is it our way of saying goodbye to the mortal world?

My mother looks so young. Too young. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. But she bounces me with a seasoned experience anyway, and as she does, she looks to the two adults with her.

“What if we come back later?” she says to them in a small voice. “Maybe I can still think on it?”

The woman gives her a gentle but stern look. “You know you can’t. You’ve already signed the paperwork.”

She bites her lip, and her eyes well again with tears. But she gives the woman a small, quick nod.

The woman looks sympathetic now. “You’ve worked up your nerve this far, sweetheart,” she says. “I think we should go on in. They’re expecting you.”

“Okay,” my mother whispers. She follows them up the stairs, and as she goes, I can feel her hands trembling.

Inside, the two adults leave us to speak to a receptionist. My mother turns me to face her, her hand cradling my head to support my neck. “Now, Rosie,” she murmurs to me, forcing a smile onto her lips. “I want you to be a good girl, all right? They’re going to be really good to you, they’ve promised. You’re going to be okay. But you’re going to need to be brave.”

I’d been told I was unwanted … But here, in this unearthed memory, she cannot bear to part with me.

I want to open my mouth and tell her that I love her, that I miss her, but I can’t. I am only a distant spectator, looking on as the infant version of me shifts in her arms.

Now the two adults have turned to look at her. Our time together is ending.

My mother—so young, a child herself—stares at me with scared eyes.

“I’m going to miss you,” she whispers. “I love you. You know that, right? Can you remember that for me?”

I had not remembered. My heart is cracking. Who are you? Where are you now? Are you still alive? Do you still want me? Do you still think of me? Do you still love me?