Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
Goldie bumped her car onto the gravel access road off Elder’s Crescent.
The meadow beyond looked like a dress rehearsal for chaos: volunteers in reflective vests lugging crates of bunting, a cupcake vendor mid-tantrum on the path, and a pair of teens swearing at a half-collapsed charm booth.
Mostly, though, it was just piles. Stacked tents.
Bundled ribbon. The bones of a festival waiting for flesh.
It was two days before Beltane, and the last several days had been a blur, one long hangover of City Hall drama threaded with group texts, magical checklists, and escalating logistics.
Goldie was still annoyed she hadn’t been able to pry those zoning records from the archives, but Tamsin had just sent a breezy text saying, we’ll make sure you have them in hand before Solstice, darling.
She’d consoled herself with drama-scrolling through shaky protest footage, a few arrests, and photos of Marlow Truckenham and Karen Vesuvius. There were even grainy shots of the Ashenvale delegation ducking into their sleek black cars.
Word on the street said the sale discussions had been “paused” until after Beltane. She’d texted Jonah for dirt, but he hadn’t much to offer—just a handful of shrugging emojis and a wink face that still managed to make her grin at the screen.
She’d spent half the night squinting at zoning overlays on Google, trying to trace where the festival’s ward-lines overlapped the Holdings’ messy patchwork of ownership. By the time she crawled into bed, her head was pounding and her eyes were seeing dotted lines everywhere.
But today and tomorrow would be a circus of last-minute Beltane prep, which was why she was here now with a trunk full of charms, arms full of errands, and a to-do list longer than the vendor path.
Goldie rounded a bend in the path and spotted a volunteer hunched over a clipboard, his antlers catching the light like polished pipework.
“Coven Chapter II?” the volunteer asked. His voice had the slightly hollow resonance of something with too many lungs. “I was told you’d be by this morning. Got a cart for you.”
Goldie winked at him. “You’re a gods-send, truly. Where should I haul everything to?”
The volunteer blinked with his two primary eyes, followed swiftly by the third one in the center of his forehead. He turned and pointed toward the mist-swathed copse. “Straight through there. You’ve got the words, right? It’s warded to keep the public out until the bonfire’s lit.”
“Exactly,” Goldie said, lips curling in satisfaction. “Perfect time to stash the good stuff. No one messing with the charm sachets before they’ve had a chance to ripen. They’re really good this year.”
The volunteer grinned. “You witches and your ritual secrets.”
Goldie winked, then turned toward her car. She popped the hatch and hauled out a cedar crate stamped SACRED FLAME COMPONENTS—HANDLE WITH REVERENCE (OR AT LEAST BOTH HANDS). She muscled it onto the cart, rolled her shoulders, and started forward.
As she crossed the boundary, the air buckled—a heat-haze in reverse, cold rushing over her. She stumbled, catching herself, and for an instant the trees seemed to lean closer, listening. A ripple crawled through the clearing, low and deliberate.
Goldie hummed brightly, as though she hadn’t noticed. “Nothing says Beltane like twitchy wards and ominous atmospherics,” she muttered, and kept rolling the cart deeper into the trees.
The path narrowed fast, ancient tree roots shouldering their way through the tidy gravel, the moss swallowing forgotten flagstones. This was the entrance to the Grove Core, the sacred center of the Green Holdings.
The Green Holdings was a beautiful sweep of land; the site of festivals, celebrations, and every kind of civic gathering.
But the Grove Core was different. If the Holdings were the body, the Grove Core was the heart—the ancient wellspring everything else grew outward from.
Some said the Grove Core held an echo of the city’s first magic, a spark that could take on shape if ever it needed or wanted to.
While the Land Trust had spent thirty years commercializing and taming the surrounding land into a profitable, multi-use zone, the Core remained stubbornly, beautifully wild.
As she walked, Goldie hoped that whatever happened with the sale to Ashenvale, this small, sacred piece of Bellwether would be allowed to remain just as it was: untouched, untamed, and breathing with old magic.
Some places simply weren’t meant to be domesticated, no matter how unstabilized they became.
At the place where the ancient tree trunks leaned together to form an arch, she stopped. The air in front of her trembled, cool and slick, like ice beginning to shear. She laid a hand against it and murmured the ritual pass-phrase.
“By root and rind, by spark and spine, grant me passage through the green.”
The trees shuddered, rattling their leaves; then the air peeled back just wide enough for a woman and a cart.
Goldie pushed up the sleeves of her hoodie, braced both hands on the cart handle and took stock of her nerves.
She’d walked this sacred place during high rites when the place blazed with lanterns and smoke.
But now, stripped of ceremony, it felt like a ballroom with the chandeliers unlit.
Focus. She bumped the cart over a lattice of roots. Deliver charms, get out.
But the path kept twisting, every turn a little sharper. Branches leaned, moss blotted out the dirt in bruised swathes. She glanced up. The tree canopy was packed so tight that it darkened the light.
The air thickened and tasted of loam. Wheels sucked at the ground, leaving wet pockets that filled and closed behind them. Goldie tried humming something breezy and show-tune-y, but the sound died half-a-pace ahead, swallowed whole.
Goldie shivered. Probably destabilization weirdness, she told herself. The path curved again, and finally, she emerged, not to the familiar central clearing, but to a wall of hedge, dense as braided iron.
She halted. That’s new. The Core had layers, sure, but never a double lock. She laid her palm against the brambles and again breathed the key phrase: “By root and rind, by spark and spine, grant me passage through the green.”
The hedge quivered, every twig sharpening like quills.
“By root and rind,” she coaxed, pressing harder. “By spark and spine–”
A low groan slid through the thicket as the branches grudgingly parted, opening a slit just wide enough to squeeze through.
Goldie grunted, shoving her weight against the cart as she pushed it through the narrow gap. The leaves felt cool and waxy against her skin, the familiar scent of damp earth and chlorophyll filling the air.
A single, thorny vine, thicker than the others and possessing an almost serpentine grace, uncoiled from the hedge wall. Before she could react, its tip, sharp as a needle, dragged across her forearm.
A startlingly bright line of crimson welled up instantly, far too much for such a minor scratch. She hissed, clapping a hand to her arm, but the blood was shockingly warm and slick, already seeping between her fingers.
Several drops splattered onto the moss at her feet.
She watched, horrified, as they vanished, absorbed into the verdant green in a heartbeat.
On the vine, the glistening smear of her blood pulsed once, then was drawn into the dark, woody surface, leaving it clean.
A faint, earthy scent, like crushed moss and thunderstorms, rose from the spot.
“What the hells?” she breathed, staring at the clean vine and the unstained moss.
The hedge gave a wet rustle in response. A low pulse, like a buried drum, rolled under her boots, syncing with the sudden, frantic rush of her own heartbeat.
It tasted me, she realized, the thought like a shard of ice in her gut.
Frantically, she dabbed at the scratch on her arm with her sleeve, the crimson staining the fabric. Definitely picking up hydrogen peroxide on the way home.
For all the blood, the stinging had already faded, and the initial shock was giving way to a stubborn, nettled resolve.
Of course the Grove Core was acting up. Of course it scratched her.
Typical Beltane madness. She shook her head hard, as if to rattle the weirdness loose, and set her shoulder to the cart. It lurched forward with a squeal.
As she rounded the final bend, there it stood: the uncanny heap of wood that arrived for Beltane every year.
No volunteer ever claimed it, no committee scheduled its construction.
One dusk it just wasn’t there; the next dawn, it loomed in the clearing as though the forest had exhaled and the logs had landed in perfect, chaotic order.
This year’s pile felt taller than usual, a wild lattice of birch and hawthorn and old oak, its heart humming with a faint inner glow. Goldie always imagined it was the trees, recognizing their own bones and warming them from the inside.
She pushed her cart to the perimeter and let her breath fog into the hush. Time to dress the fire.
One by one, she lifted the charm bundles, and began placing them strategically among the logs.
Fertility charms filled with citrine chips, wildflower petals, and fibers snipped from a toddler’s sweater.
Protection wards, filled with black salt, rosemary, and orange cat hairs.
Luck bundles, knotted tight with coins and scraps of old receipts; love charms, fragrant with dried apple peel and tied in red ribbon; healing sachets filled with bandages and willow bark.
Outside the dense hedge walls, the Beltane festival was a thoroughly modern civic celebration, rooted in old traditions but tamed for public consumption.
But here, in the Grove Core, the old ways still held sway.
The bundles of herbs and flowers tucked into the heart of the bonfire would hum as they burned, their ancient enchantments weaving through the crowd to bless every heartbeat, every skipped breath, every kiss stolen in the shadows of the ancient trees.
Goldie ducked beneath a drooping branch at the rear of the pyre, clutching the final packet, and stopped at the sight of someone laying on the grass.
“Sorry,” she chirped, instinctively polite. “Didn’t realize anyone was back here.”
No answer. The figure curled on its side, one arm tucked beneath the head, the other draped across the chest.
No one was supposed to be inside the Core this early. Warders and council reps were badged in only on festival day. Maybe the council had posted an overnight guard? With the destabilization and the whole Ashenvale sale thing, it would almost make sense.
Goldie set the charm beside the southern arc of the pile, then edged closer, unease winding tight in her gut.
“Hey,” she tried again. “You okay?”
Silence.
Goldie knelt. The head lolled forward, chin pressed almost to chest, as though in prayer. The hair was neatly combed, the jacket well-fitted, shoes shined, pants still sharply creased. Dressed in its finest, as if the individual had meant to attend a meeting and simply laid down.
“Sir?” Goldie’s fingertips curled around the figure’s shoulder, and she gave it the gentlest shake.
The body rolled onto its back.
Marlow Truckenham stared up at her, eyes filmed, mouth gaping. His shirt was soaked through with black-red blood, blooming from the center of his chest in a perfect, terrible circle.