3. Barn … Dance? #2
The afternoon shadows stretched well to the east by the time she finished the blue on the basket and the red on one starburst. It was sort of like a quilt star, but not exactly.
It wasn't a hex pattern, either. Eight points, each one a stretched diamond of blue, red, green, and a quiet gray, inside a gray ring.
She'd need red for the flowers on the door, red and ...
Pure yellow? No, a little darker than that, more of a goldy-yellow.
Too pure and they wouldn't show in the shadows, so a little darker, but not so dark they clashed with the green and the rest of the pattern.
She stepped back a few yards and considered the wall and the balance.
If the door had been in the middle, and if Mrs. Johnson had wanted four patterns, it would look better. Crowded, but more balanced. Oh well.
Penny covered the paint, cleaned her brushes on the cement pad away from the water stuff, and packed the trailer.
She hadn't sweated through everything today, just her base layer.
Several people had sworn that this was record heat, adding quickly that it was good for the corn.
She'd nodded and paid for her stuff, then got out of the way.
Too many people just standing around made her twitch.
The colors around them didn't always blend well.
After supper that evening she checked her email.
"Riiiight, I need a new roof. Wood shingle?
" she snorted. You had to have a house to need a roof, and wood wasn't allowed anymore after the last big fire anyway.
The one from Mr. Salvatore's crew boss left her sagging with relief.
They'd need her in September, maybe earlier, but certainly in September for two houses in that new development on the edge of the Barrens—Wild View Estates or something like that.
She replied that yes, she'd be there, and her email address and phone were still good.
"More water, then the family notes." She'd gotten low during the day, not as low as the summer she'd had to do attics and eves, though, then paint as part of the crew on the highway bridge art thing.
Father or sister? She tossed a coin. Sister first. Penny opened it and winced at the first two sentences.
"No, I do not want to come to the beach house, no I do not want to meet the charming single guy with the financial business, and we've had this talk already.
" She wasn't built for floaty pastel beach dresses, even if she'd had the personality for them.
She glanced at her arm and shoulder. Nope, "cute" sleeveless sun dresses did not flatter a working Italian woman's body.
"I'm not Sophia Loren or Gina Lollabrigida.
Get over it, Pia." Pia thought she could solve everyone's problems, or what she thought were people's problems. It wasn't malicious, just awkward.
She replied with polite non-answers, then braced and read her father's message.
She finished and stared at the wall. Someone had not used the right base layer under the creamy white, and a little gray leaked through.
Her father's temper leaked through his words, too.
"I'm not running away. I'm working. I can't fix mother, I can't do what you need at the house, hospitals make me sick.
All I could do is get in the way, Father," she told the silent little house.
The fridge hummed a soothing reply of sorts.
Why did he keep asking? He'd seen what happened the last time she'd gone with the family to visit her mother.
The chaos of colors around the patients, the spikes and pokes around some of the staff, especially that one nurse that later went to jail for elder abuse ...
Even shielded she couldn't stop seeing the pulses and strange swirls. Worst were the late-stage Alzheimer’s patients, the ones that just sat, dull, numb green-gray-brown, a no-color color that drained her as she sat there, trying to talk to her mother.
But it wasn't her mother in the body, not anymore.
Why couldn't he see that? Her mother was cool brown, restful and sturdy.
The woman in her mother's body had a strange yellow twining through brittle brown and black.
Penny shook off the memories. "Be polite and kind," she reminded herself for the twentieth time.
A traditional daughter would be at home, helping do house things, caring for the men and the rest of the family.
She was doing that, but by working and sending funds to help cover the bills and her nephew's school tuition and stuff.
Why couldn't he understand? She sighed, since no one was around to hear, and typed a reply.
Paint and colors and finishes always made sense. People did not.
"I was due," she sighed the next day as rain poured down in a wet wall.
She'd gotten the rest of the red done on the second star and the basket, and had just started the doorframe when the weather alarm on her phone began to blat, and then the car joined in.
"Should have been watching better." Now heavy storm rain turned dirt into mud.
The swirling wind made painting pointless.
She'd had time to cover her cans and lock the trailer doors before it really hit.
"At least it's cooler." Elementals danced around the car, then faded into the storm.
The sun emerged half an hour later, and the world steamed.
She squelched back to the shed and finished the red flowers.
Water still dripped from the eves. Everything seemed brighter and more intense after the bath.
Cow flop, dirt, grass, and other smells filled the hot air, completely different from the city.
She shrugged to herself and considered colors.
She had enough time to get started with the green, but did she want to?
She called up the weather on her phone and shook her head. More storms were coming.
She found the Johnsons at the chicken house, fixing the roof. "Are you done?" Mrs. Johnson called as Peter pounded nails into a patch.
"No, ma'am, but there's more weather coming, and I can't work in the storms. The wind swirls dirt and other things into the wet paint." Letting everything dry, as much as it could, would be a good thing, too. The colors needed time to settle into their new place.
Brown and rich-dirt black Mr. Johnson stopped hammering and looked up. "More weather?"
"Yes, sir. Half an hour or so away, if the forecast's right."
He mouthed something probably rude. "Thanks. Need to pick up the pace, then." The couple returned to their work. Penny watched for a moment, then picked a less-muddy way back to the car and trailer. She packed, locked the trailer, and drove out, closing the gate behind herself as she went.
She went first to one of the cafes and got three suppers to go, then bought more water and sports drinks. A quick detour to the farmers' market shop later, she studied the selection. "Ah, that very dark loaf, please, and the long brown one."
"These two, yes?" the sturdy green and brown woman behind the counter asked, holding up the loaves.
"Yes, and all the little cookies on the second row."
"Gut. Dey need to go." As she wrote the sale on a pad of carbon paper, the door opened. "You again?"
A man's deep voice said, "Me again Frau Benz.
" Penny turned and saw a large, brown-blond man with a silver-edged violet aura standing in the doorway.
He wore a dirty work shirt and jeans with mud up to his knees.
"My lady says I forgot to get a rye, if you have any left, and something with fruit or chocolate. " He carried very strong shields.
"Fourteen eighty-four, bitt." Penny paid and took the breads and cookies. "You chust wait there, I bring the rye and five peach hand pies, ja? Field call?"
"Ja. Broken tractor and mower." The muddy man stepped to the side as she passed, but didn't leave the mud mat. She felt something brush her shields. He nodded but didn't ask or say anything. She added the bread to one of the take-out bags, then drove to the in-law cottage.
Two days later, Penny considered the paintings on the shed.
Something seemed off. She walked closer, and the sense grew.
Not wrong, but ... almost wrong, as if a color wasn't quite correct but not so far no one would notice?
She shifted to seeing magic and blinked, then frowned. "What a waste of power."
Someone had tried to charge the paintings with magic, as if they truly were hex signs.
It couldn't have been the Johnsons, because they were not even Sensitives.
No, someone else had ... She extended one hand and rested her fingertips just above one of the green starburst diamonds.
They tried to add a warding-off spell, one to discourage business and make people a little uncomfortable.
It had failed, of course, because this wasn't that sort of pattern, but it left a puddle of icky nausea-green power behind.
"How rude." Penny scattered some salt over the spot, then surrounded it with magic and cleaned it away.
Someone didn't want the craft and produce stand to do well.
A competitor, or family enemy, or just nasty person?
She shrugged, had a cookie, then started to mix the gray paint.
None of her business, since it had not worked.
They should have waited until she finished, anyway, because everyone knew that an unfinished pattern never responded the way it was supposed to.
She'd watched a sorcery student learn it the hard way.
Had Antonio's eyebrows ever grown back? If not, it served him right.
Rushing pattern spells worked as well as rushing paint and other finishes.
You could do a few things, sometimes, but not most of the time.
Especially not shellac. The guy who tried that had died in the explosion.