12. Chapter 12
I drove around the Dark Entry Forest until I came across the house on the edge of the forest. It was a cute little place kept in good condition. It surprised me to find the barn and garden in front of the elderwood home instead of behind it. A witch built this house.
Interesting.
Perhaps they destroyed the one that was previously here.
A knock rapped on my window, and Myrtle waved at me with a smile.
“Sorry, I was checking out the perimeter,” I lied. “I didn’t realize just how close you were.”
“Well, you’re already here.” She laughed. “Come on in.”
She opened the door and gestured me inside. Her eyes fell to the ground behind me, and I turned to find footsteps burned into the grass pathway. Our blue eyes locked, but neither of us said anything, each one waiting for the other to confess the truth.
I was suspicious at the diner. Now I was sure: she knew more about him. I stepped in without saying anything. We’d get to the truth soon enough.
The tiny house was cozy in a way that reminded me of my aunt’s house. The tiny symbols of protection were carved into every wall. The old knickknacks were talismans that her family line probably acquired or made over the years. She was definitely one of us.
Even if her family line had forgotten that.
She served me some coffee before sitting at the two-person table. She stayed silent for a few minutes with a frown settled on her face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“I’m worried.” Her frown deepened as she stared at her cup.
“Why is that?”
She laughed to herself and played with the obsidian pendant hanging from her neck. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
“That’s a sign, you know,” I teased. “That I’m the one the universe thinks needs the message.”
“I couldn’t have children.” The pain in her eyes twisted my heart. “Once I die. No one will take dandelions to the forest in spring.”
I swallowed harshly. “Are you dying?”
The shadows of the wall moved in a way that could only be described as jerky or short. He was aggravated at the very suggestion. The room grew darker. He liked the woman that brought him dandelions. He didn’t want her to die.
Why does he care? An unwelcome ugly feeling bubbled in my chest that I refused to let settle too deeply.
She shook her head, but pointed to her chest. “But it’s been eating away at me for years. When I think about it, I have anxiety attacks. Why does it scare me so much? It’s a silly old tradition.”
The shadows settled and thinned as if he was trying to keep himself calm for her sake. Because he knew he was the cause of her distress.
“Why?” I echoed her, hoping to encourage her to look inwards for the answer locked in her mind somewhere.
She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. I waited in silence as her fingers twisted her pendant nervously before she clutched the stone in her hand until her knuckles turned white.
There was something.
Her watery eyes finally snapped open, “When I was a young girl, I didn’t take the flowers to the forest edge once.”
I suspected as much.
“My dad wasn’t as superstitious. So he never said much about the dandelions. But then we moved in to take care of my grandma as she died. Grandma made me promise to always take the flowers. She’d double and triple check with me every morning, even when she could barely talk.”
She swallowed as she remembered. “I kept doing it. Even after she died. I think I wanted to feel close to her. My father never discouraged me, but he didn’t enforce it like she did. He just gave me a sad smile when I did it.”
I nodded at her.
“He remarried a local woman a few years later, and her first rule when she moved in was to forbid me from taking the dandelions. She said it was the devil’s work, and she wouldn’t stand for witchcraft.
She caught me going out the back door and started an entire argument with my father, when her screeching woke him up.
I think he didn’t understand how to tell her, so she won the argument. ”
She stared at the clock on the wall, like she was in another place and time. “That night, I saw the shadow of a man outside my window. I guess he knew it was me who took over. He didn’t have a face or eyes.”
“I was nine and terrified, but he didn’t do anything to scare me. Now that I’m older, it was like he was making sure I was okay.” She nodded to herself. “I’ve felt him ever since then. It makes me feel safe. Like nothing can touch me.”
The wind chime hanging on the wall twinkled even though there weren’t any windows open.
“Like he’s breathing down your neck.”
“Like a guardian angel.” She smiled fondly. The wind chime twinkled louder with his approval. Her eyes flicked to it in acknowledgement, before her face turned grim.
“That night, all the livestock dropped dead, and the garden withered away. The only thing that survived was the dandelions. My stepmom screamed about a demon threatening her, but daddy never found anything. After that, she always reminded me to take the dandelions out, and I could swear she was always looking over her shoulder. She convinced daddy to give me the house as soon as I turned eighteen.”
The stepmother felt him too, but not like the peace he gave Myrtle or the fucked shit I did.
“Do you still feel him?” I asked.
“Every day.”
How could he be with both of us?
The faintest touch of jealousy crossed my mind. Did he make her cum the way he did me?
My eyes narrowed on the kind, elderly woman for one second, before I realized how angry I was getting. I shook my head to dislodge that train of thought. What the fuck was wrong with me?
A heavy hand landed in my hair, claws gently scraping my scalp. As if to tell me to quit acting crazy. Something a man would do to comfort his envious significant other. Reassurance.
I ducked my head down. I didn’t need reassurance. I needed a padded room for ever having that thought.
He followed me, threading his hand in my hair. A soft warning to never pull away from him again.
This motherfucker.
“Do you want me to show you how I take him flowers?” Myrtle offered, distracting me from the battle of wills I was about to stupidly jump into.
“I’d love that.” My rage seeped away, letting curiosity win. Perhaps the ritual would illuminate the situation.
Then she opened a drawer and pulled out some twine and chicken feathers. She sat down and started a loop that I was intimately familiar with.
“I wish you peace that death did not offer you,” she proclaimed as she put in the first knot. “I wish you calm and serenity.”
A witch’s ladder.
Hand-knotted with healing intentions.
“Do I need to slow down the knots?”
“No. I’ve got it,” I promised. It sat on the edge of my lips that they were my specialty, but my fingers went to the twine around my neck. The one I made while I was in the asylum to ease my heart.
Interesting coincidence.
I watched her go through all the knots until she came to the last one. “I wish you rest.”
She rubbed it between her fingers, closing her eyes. Properly pouring all her intentions into the last knot. I didn’t dare interrupt and interfere with the spell she didn’t know she was casting.
The shadows in the room quivered and slowly shrank. As if he’d released the tension in his body. It worked.
Once she was done, she blushed, like she suddenly realized that I would probably think the whole thing was stupid. If only she knew.
A lot of off-branch Rinah’s only remembered the knowledge they needed to survive. They latch onto a nugget or two that their direct ancestors drilled into them. Especially with families that have a local issue, like this one.
She took her ladder and led me out the back door. “Between March and June, this entire field fills with dandelions. We haven’t done anything to get rid of them for obvious reasons. My grandmother said her mother was the one to plant them.”
“Interesting choice.” I nudged, hoping someone told her why a weed was her choice of decor.
“Supposedly, she’s the one who replanted most of the Dark Entry Forest. That the trees were ash near the settlement, and she would go and throw seeds around.”
“She was allowed to enter?”
“My grandmother said that she knew her way around ghosts and spooks, but that her mother told her to never to enter. That the harbinger of death rested inside, and it was best to leave him be.”
I followed her down the sloping hill. Even without the blooms the field was peaceful. I checked the ground behind me for any sign of corrosion, but the field stayed pristine. If anything the green radiated too bright under the sun. As if each leaf was working overtime to be perfect.
Perhaps he wasn’t always at my side.
A piece of me was weirdly disappointed in that possibility.
“I like a bundle of nine, but three works if there is a drought or something.”
For the goddesses.
He mentioned praying to the goddess when I was in the forest. So at some point, probably Myrtle’s great-grandmother, one of these witches, actively practiced enough for him to be familiar with the religion.
We came to the bottom of the hill. The line between the Dark Entry Forest and her land was obvious. The land in the forest was a darker green, closer to black, as if it had died and grown back again countless times.
“I set it down here.” She pointed to the divide. “I wrap the knots around the flowers like a band.”
“What kind of twine are you using?” My eyes landed on the trees sprinkled about her property line a moment too late.
“Elderwood.” Myrtle confirmed my suspicions.
“Did you miss your ritual when the kids were out here in June?”
She shook her head. “The blooms stopped early this year.”
“So there is no reason for him to be so violent with the teenagers.” I hummed, leaning on the elderwood tree nearby. “At least not that we know of.”
That said, teenagers could be thoughtless. They stomped on the wrong shit all the time. I’d cleaned up countless messes caused by people between the ages of twelve and nineteen.
The sun rose high enough to angle my shadow in front of me. Except, one thing made my heartbeat speed up.
My shadow didn’t match a short, curvy woman with curly hair tossed in a bun on her head. It was the man. I froze in place, but the shadow’s hand moved as if it was rolling over something curvy.
My face grew hot as I realized he was standing directly behind me, and it was me that he was caressing with soft, loving motions. I could almost swear I could feel him, but I knew that was in my head.
I forced deep breaths to calm myself and hummed an old tune Aunt Jackie would sing at night when I cried for my mother. I went to bend over and realized he’d probably be inches away from me.
The heat migrated lower as I decided how much I wanted to push my luck before I squatted down instead, running my hands over the overgrown grass. “The witch’s ladders are gone, but not the dead blooms.”
“Huh?”
I pointed to the knotted twine in her hand.
She froze as she stared at it. I could almost hear the click as everything came together for her. “You know, I haven’t gotten your name.”
I gave her a small smile and answered the actual question she was asking. “Sasha Rinah.”
That would be my name again soon enough.
Her eyes went wide like she’d seen a ghost. “You’re…That’s my maiden name.”
“I figured as much.” I rose to my feet, sticking my hand out for her to shake.
“You were sent by the coven?” Her eyes grew wide, as if she was reliving a childhood story. She even took a step back.
“They didn’t send me. I found this job on my own.” But her reaction was curious.
“I heard they were vile people,” she whispered.
“Ah.” Her information was probably from her great-grandmother from a hundred years ago. The Rinah name had been a curse until the last couple of generations. “The dark witches that used to control the coven don’t have power anymore. In fact, I’ve spent most of my life cleaning their messes.”
My direct branch had single-handedly tucked the old birds away where they couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. We were still a morally gray bunch, but we weren’t creating nightmares.
She let out a sigh of relief.
“I guess you were right then.” Her smile grew bright again. “We were meant to meet.”
Her smile was contagious.
“You know I’ve never seen him latch onto someone the way he’s glued to you. Are you sure you know what you’ve gotten into?”
“I thought he was attached to you?”
“Not like this.” She shook her head. It soothed a piece of me that shouldn’t exist.
“I’m not sure of anything right now.”
She’d never know how true that was.