Chapter Thirty #2
The thicket grew thicker as she went. If she didn’t duck in time, thin branches snatched her hair and clawed at her cheeks and brow.
One prickly branch drew blood when it scratched her temple.
She wished she’d worn a scarf too. She nearly turned back more than once, confronted by yet another twist of the creek and even narrower gaps on the path.
Creatures too big to be squirrels or rabbits scurried on the forest floor beside her feet, and she stiffened with alarm.
The mysteries of unseen creatures had delighted her as a child, but now she knew about rabies.
And she knew that if she fell out here and broke a bone, Grady would have a hell of a time finding her, so she walked with mincing steps instead of streaking through the woods the way she had when she was seven.
Sweat ran from her face and pasted her dress to her skin.
When was the next time she would be able to take a proper shower?
Mazelle moved faster as her agitation grew, and she tripped over an exposed root, falling to her knees despite her efforts to catch herself against a pine trunk.
Her dress tore, and she felt her knees scrape against the dry soil.
Scraped knees had meant nothing to her once upon a time, but now she yelled out in frustration and sent a redheaded turkey vulture flapping away through the underbrush.
Had the giant carrion eater been following her? Not today, bird, she thought.
Mazelle sat on a fallen tree trunk to examine her knees, which were predictably dotted with blood across the white scrapes on her skin.
“I better take my ass back to the car,” she said.
Her fog of resolve had lifted, and now she felt angry with herself for wasting her time and ruining one of her favorite peach-colored summer dresses.
It almost felt, inexplicably, as if the unwelcoming woods wanted her to leave.
Then Mazelle looked up from where she sat and saw a shaft of light through the thick shelter of tree branches.
Only twenty paces to her left, the ancient twin oaks that marked the spot leaned into view like kissing cousins.
If she hadn’t stumbled, she would have walked right past them.
The trees didn’t look a day older, caught in time.
She checked to make sure she hadn’t dropped her shiny penny.
The mint 1949 copper coin still gleamed in her palm, which she’d held tight even as she fell.
But where was the Wishing Pool? When she’d come before, water had spread through the grass like a miniature swamp, appearing at her toes. The soil nearest her today was parched, and as she carefully walked closer to the twin oaks, she saw no signs of moisture in the sunlight.
But wait—it was there!
The Wishing Pool looked more like a proper pool now, not a swamp floor: a nearly perfect circle of green-brown water the size of a large bicycle tire, framed by thin reeds.
Unlike the oak trees above it, the Wishing Pool was utterly transformed.
Discovering the pool caught Mazelle’s breath.
Her pulse pounded in her palm still clinging to the sweaty coin.
Now that she was here, she felt unprepared.
As a child, she’d had sense enough to write down her wish, but she had forgotten to do that today.
And it wasn’t just a wish this time, was it?
It was a negotiation. She specifically had asked for a best friend forever, and that wish had been revoked.
Stolen. She had returned to get what she was owed.
As Mazelle stood before the Wishing Pool with her excited heartbeat, her knees shook the way they had right before she pulled back her impromptu curtain to perform for her family with Scout for the first time.
This moment was as important as that one had been, something that could change her life.
That knowledge was as real as the beating sun.
Whose favor was she begging? Were the wishes from God, or somewhere else? These questions had never nagged at Mazelle in childhood, but upon returning here it felt foolish to be asking magical favors when she didn’t know who would be listening. Dangerous, more like it.
She might have stood frozen with that unanswered question for an hour except for an encouraging voice in her head: It’s probably not real. You just got lucky when you found Scout.
With that, Mazelle’s knees steadied as she found her courage.
What was the order? Did you make the wish first or throw the coin? She tried to remember the long-ago instructions from Priscilla Stephens, but she reminded herself it wasn’t real and followed her instincts.
“Remember me?” she said, feeling foolish as she spoke to a pool of water so dirty that she couldn’t see her own reflection to talk to.
“Well, I’m back to claim what’s mine. I wished for a best friend to—” As she thought of Scout and his loving brown eyes, Mazelle’s voice hitched.
She knew she was really mourning Daddy, but that grief felt too big to hold all at once.
It was so much easier to think about Scout, who was already more memory than real.
“—to stay with me forever,” Mazelle went on when she was able.
“And I got my wish, but then Scout went away. Now, I don’t know if it was something I did or didn’t do, but I’m here to wish Scout back.
And I promise I’ll never take him for granted this time.
My wish is for him to be with me forever, and we can take care of each other.
This time, I never want him to go. And I’ll love Scout like no one else. ”
As she said those last words, Mazelle almost wished she hadn’t.
Had she gone too far by promising superior love for Scout?
Was that even possible? She was a mother, after all.
Or could those words change her somehow, sealed into her wish?
Any new words she spoke to clarify or correct herself might only create new paths for the wish to go astray, so she decided she had said enough.
Too much, maybe. Words had never felt so perilous.
Mazelle had grown up believing she had lost Scout because of selfishness and naked ambition, so she tried to wish with a clean heart—not fantasizing about what a sensation she would be in movies if she could work with Scout again.
But how could she not think of it? Would she be punished for those thoughts?
Mazelle tossed the penny with perfect precision so cleanly that the pool’s surface barely rippled.
The dulled copper vanished into the muck.
Right away, she was sure she’d made a mistake.
She felt a strong urge to reach in and try to pull the penny back out.
Wishes always try to trick you, Priscilla Stephens had said, and her impromptu wish didn’t feel trick-proof.
Instead of worrying about sounding selfish, shouldn’t she have said she wanted Scout to make her the most famous actress in the world?
Give her everything she’d been robbed of?
What if Scout returned and couldn’t follow her commands anymore?
Or what if the trick on her was something worse?
The silence hanging over her might have been natural, or it might not be, but Mazelle felt like the only living thing in the woods.
The air sagged heavy with wrongness. She could think of a thousand loopholes in her wish.
Would the entity that held dominion over the Wishing Pool resent her for her greed?
She wanted to whisper assurances that she would treasure Scout and the gifts he brought back from wherever he’d been, but she couldn’t pull her tight lips apart, afraid she might say the wrong thing. Or undo her wish.
Mazelle backed away from the Wishing Pool, wiping dirt from her scuffed knees.
Just in case Scout would return, she wanted to get back to the road to meet him as soon as she could.
At the very least, she needed to get back to her car and her children in case she had stirred up her own bad luck with that deputy.
As she started to turn away, the Wishing Pool gurgled behind her.
She stopped mid-stride and turned around to see if she’d really heard the sound. The previously calm waters rippled with large bubbles that gurgled when they burst, as if the bubbles had a language. The Wishing Pool looked like a slow-boiling pot of water on the stove.
Mazelle was sure nothing like this had happened the first time she was here.
The churning water did not signal a cause for celebration.
On sight, the water unsettled her. She took another step away.
And another. She didn’t stop until she found a wide pine trunk to stand behind ten yards back to watch the Wishing Pool’s activity from a safe distance.
The churning roiled faster, splashing water beyond its borders.
“I take it back…” Mazelle whispered, though she was trying to shout from her grieving throat. “I take back my wish. I’m sorry!”
The water rollicked as if the Wishing Pool were laughing at her. Mazelle’s anger and frustration surged. “It’s not right!” she whisper-screamed to the entity beneath the murky water. “If you give something, you don’t just take it away! You left me with nothing!”
Thinking of Scout—and Daddy, of course—tears drowned Mazelle’s cheeks.
The water stilled itself abruptly, as unnatural as its dancing had been.
A large silver fish the size of a trout splashed out of the Wishing Pool, flopping on the soil. It heaved and shivered, gasping to breathe. Mazelle stared with amazement, expecting it to vanish as quickly as it appeared, but the longer she stared, the more its true form became clear.