As the book comes to a close, Trembling Sally has died in the fire she set trying to kill Abby and Lily Norene's daughters, and Abby and the girls are tucked safely inside the old Barker home, surrounded by the women from the community who've gathered to sew bedspreads for Lily Norene's children. After so many years of being haunted by Trembling Sally, Abby is finally free from the madwoman's vendetta. Yay.
Something even more important happens in this last chapter, though: One of Lily Norene's daughters sings a song:
I am but an arrow.
The wind is my bow.
And where I go,
Merciful breezes flow. (30.10)
Shortly after, the group of women take up the tune:
The women bent their heads and hummed as they sewed in the manner of creative women since back when cotton became thread, then became cloth. But what the hummed was the melody of Lily Norene's child, this melody taught to her by Abby, this melody whose lyrics were a paraphrase from Mother Barker. (30.8)
Interconnectedness across generations of women emerges here: Mother Barker teaches Abby who teaches Lily's daughter who teaches a whole intergenerational community of women. And importantly, what's passed along through them is hope, it is the assurance of "mercy" no matter how hard life may be at times.
Finished sewing the birds she's been working on for the quilt, Abby begins to, well, soar (yeah, we couldn't resist the bad pun). She commands silence with a simple gesture and then addresses the women, saying:
"You women of women, you women of mercy, balancing crystals of water on your wings, rise from deep ashes, rise from old ashes, rise etched and marked from scarifications, rise and fly." (30.30)
It is a message of resolute hope—Abby sees the power in the women around her, sees that they "rise" against all odds. And then Abyssinia "[shakes] dew from her wings, and start[s] to climb" (30.31) herself, ready to fully step into her own power.