Chapter 11
“And that is where all the teenagers hang out, ordering one plate of fries and using it as an excuse to stay all night.” Zaide pointed Hayleigh toward a diner labeled The Honey Bear, its logo featuring the so-named bear scarfing the contests of a sticky, oozing pot.
The contest was over and judged, and Arnauld and Zaide had walked out with winners’ ribbons pinned to their lapels.
They’d also received large bottles of festively flavored mead branded with Sasquatch for no apparent reason other than trend chasing.
As runners-up, Stephan and Hayleigh walked away with peppermint chocolate Sasquatch feet made by the same candy company.
No one but Stephan understood why the smell of peppermint made her recoil.
As the four of them searched downtown for a dinner spot, the locals took it upon themselves to act as Hayleigh’s tour guides, pointing out all the landmarks.
Zaide’s earlier frostiness had melted, likely in the flush of victory, but Hayleigh still felt a bit unsure of how to act after the conversation with Stephan.
She’d heaped praise on their winning snowsquatch, pointing out Zaide’s detail work as particularly excellent, but she was fairly sure she’d overdone it because the response had been a puzzled smile.
“Didn’t you and Rowan get kicked out with the other theater geeks for re-creating the ‘La Vie Bohème’ scene from Rent?” asked Arnauld.
“Ah, please don’t remind me of that,” said Zaide, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “We didn’t know ourselves…At least they kicked us out before Rowan mooned someone.”
“Would she have really done that?” said Hayleigh.
“Well, she was singing Maureen’s part,” said Zaide, “and with the way she goes all in on things…Yeah, I think it would’ve happened.”
The Honey Bear looked mediocre at best, but also cheap, and cheap was necessary at this point. She didn’t know how to tell the group that she needed that; communicating a budget wasn’t a skill she’d ever had to develop.
“Let’s eat at the festival,” said Arnauld. “Everyone can get what they want.”
“And I can get us a vendor discount,” said Stephen. She had to look away as he said it, but she was grateful all the same. Flustered gratitude brought a flush to her cheeks.
As they made their way into the festival grounds, a group of children tumbled out of a translucent geodesic dome that hosted free daily arts and crafts activities. They all held four-point paper star ornaments in bright primary colors close to their chests.
Seeing the question written on her face, Stephan said, “It’s for Las Posadas. They’re pinata ornaments.”
Just ahead, the children gathered below an actual star-shaped pinata, which dangled from a cord, stuffed to bursting.
An old man beside the pinata launched into a call-and-response song in Spanish.
Some of the children looked confused, but others sang right along and quickly enough, everyone had it.
Someone was walking around with a tray of pint-sized tamale samples, steamed corn husk exteriors doming around fillings of spiced meat and cheese. At a table nearby, a woman passed out small round donuts and ladled drinks from an earthen clay pot.
Stephan grabbed them cups and passed one over.
There were cinnamon sticks poking out and chunks of fruit floating at the top.
She gave it a tentative sip, immediately going for a second.
The drink was a sweet mix of both familiar and unfamiliar fruit flavors, like tropical cider, and it had a warm, spicy kick.
“Ponche,” Stephan said with a contented sigh.
“Delicious,” said Haleigh, going for more.
“So you two really gonna go somewhere called Eucharist tomorrow?” asked Arnauld, as they moved on from the Las Posadas celebration toward food stalls arrayed around a high, rotating windmill-like building that had a trio of singers performing for the crowds in its topmost level.
“We are indeed,” said Stephan.
“Better hope this isn’t a ‘hills have eyes’ situation,” said Arnauld. “Because that is a ‘hills have eyes’ kind of name.”
“Any idea yet who you’re looking for?” said Zaide, licking her fingers to get at the remains of a tamale sample.
“No, but it’s not a big place, so hopefully it won’t be too hard to spot signs of magic.”
“Wait, you’re driving all that way, not even knowing if there’s actually someone there to find?” said Arnauld.
“Yes,” said Hayleigh with a weary sigh. “Yes, we are.”
“Only way to do it,” said Stephan. “It’s not like we have some kind of registry or council or something.”
“You don’t?” asked Arnauld, and the witches shook their heads.
“That’s kinda disappointing, to be honest. Seemed like somewhere out there, there should be some robed group of ultra-powerful witches trying to get the rest of y’all’s business.
Or like warring houses, each with their own special kind of magic and political back-alley dealings. ”
“You’ve been watching too much TV,” said Zaide with an affectionate eye roll.
“I hear things are a little more organized over in Europe,” said Stephan. “But not here in the good old United States of Self-Sufficiency.”
“I don’t really want a council in our business, making, like, magical laws,” said Zaide, “especially because that means magical cops, but I’ve gotta say: Having an actual library of spells would be amazing. I didn’t believe you guys at first when you told me most spells were home-brewed.”
“That’s less about being disorganized and more about the many times everything and everyone magical was burned,” said Stephan, his face darkening.
“We learned that if you write something down, it becomes evidence in your trial. Even if it’s been a while…
that kind of memory follows you generations down. ”
There was a collective, uncomfortable shift of bodies around him.
“We’re quite a few cultural revolutions past that excuse,” said Zaide, finally. “I don’t care what your mom says about it, Stef—I’m dragging the witch community into this century and starting us a wiki.”
“Well, better prep yourself for a fight.”
Zaide cracked her knuckles and stretched her arms over her head in reply.
“So if it’s not like that—magical societies and dusty libraries full of scrolls and weird initiations—then what is it like?” asked Hayleigh, caught off guard at the surge of curiosity that spilled out with the question.
Arnauld stared at Zaide and Stephan expectantly. “Ooo, I’m ready to hear this. I’ve never been nosy enough to ask.”
The pair of witches exchanged a look. “I guess it went pretty differently for both of us,” said Stephan.
“I was born to it. Grew up with my mom and uncle and grandma all working with it every day. Not to say I slid out of the womb casting. You can know magic is around but not be aware of it, and I finally became aware when I was about ten. It’s… hard to explain the difference. But…”
His eyes caught Hayleigh’s as he spoke, “You know how you don’t really know your heart is beating most of the time, but if you decide to listen for it, you feel it there, pulsing, in your chest, beneath your skin?”
She nodded, but with the way her heart had been kicking against her ribs ever since he’d locked eyes with her, she hadn’t had to try very hard.
“It’s a bit like that. Suddenly you feel it—something that was always there, helping to drive the world around you, but you just weren’t listening in the right way to hear it. Everyone describes it differently. Rowan says she sees it like threads of gold light stringing everything together.”
“What about you?”
Stephan closed his eyes and took a slow breath.
“For me, it’s like standing on damp earth after a storm, when the soil presses back up against you.
There’s this slow, deep thrum, like the earth is breathing.
It’s that.” He opened his eyes again and was still staring directly into hers. “It’s like the breath of the world.”
She couldn’t keep in a small sigh of awe that slipped from her lips as goose bumps erupted across her flesh, and he grinned, tipping his chin up in acknowledgment.
He knew the effect he was having on her, and it left her stiff and awkward, as she warred against the impulse to tell him to keep going and pull her in deeper.
“Whoa, that’s deep, man,” said Arnauld, dispelling the effect of Stephan’s words.
Hayleigh moved her eyes to Zaide and said, “And you?”
Zaide studied her for a moment, as if trying to judge whether she really wanted to know or was just being polite.
Hayleigh started to put on the same forced, too-strong smile she’d used back at the snowsquatch competition but then stopped herself.
She did her best to just look, well, present. Present, and ready to listen.
A small smile passed over Zaide’s lips, and she said, “Well, unlike Stef, I wasn’t born into this. Though my great-great-grandma was apparently a shaman back in Korea. I didn’t know that bit of family lore till one of my aunties caught me doing spellwork.”
She looked away, apparently trying to work out how she’d say the next bit.
“Once I really admitted to myself what it was, I realized I’d known for a long time.
I’ve always run hot, and there were these moments where I would just burn up.
My parents took me to all kinds of doctors thinking I had some kind of fever disease, but since the episodes would only last minutes, they’d never get me to a doctor in time.
So yeah, that’s what it’s like, I guess.
It’s the heat everything gives off, burning a trail through life.
And I get so hot when I take it all in that sometimes I don’t know if I am just going to go right out in a blaze. But if I do? Worth it.”
Hayleigh allowed the explanations to sink in. “All of that’s very…lyrical, but I think I might be more confused than when we started.” Stephan surprised her then by taking her hand and turning it palm up. He pressed his pointer finger into the valley at its center and locked eyes with her.