Chapter 26 Starlings and Bourbon #2
She was a sucker for romance and poetry. Today she smiled over the latter until the empty seat across from her was filled and she looked up to frown at the unexpected visitor.
"I need help."
"I brought bourbon," Tilly said, holding up a rounded bottle of shining amber liquid. The top was a gold bird with spread wings and the women all passed around the amber crystal glasses, filling them as silence filled the kitchen.
"Anyone scared Cassidy will show up?" Kelsea asked.
"No. This isn't her house anymore. And the souls here didn't want her and still don't," Ursula said with a firm edge.
"That's my girl," Jen said with a wink lifting her glass.
They cheersed and then made their way to the graveyard where the fog was thick and hovering and the woods took on an eerie daytime glow.
The air felt frenzied and vertiginous. Even the birds were loud and boisterous, as if they felt the shift in the world.
This place was unsettled. The croaking of the bullfrogs created a bass to the high-pitched crying.
"The birds are intense," Tilly noticed.
"Where is Jessica?" Jen asked.
"She stopped for coffee," Kelsea replied as she looked around warily.
"Does she know coffee and hard alcohol aren't the best mix?"
Tilly gave Jen a look. "Do we know hard alcohol isn't the best in general?"
Jen pointed to her with a wink and raised glass. "To unwise decisions."
"The souls here are not happy," Crystal said shaking her head. "Let's see if we can make it right."
Jessica sat back after she'd closed her book and let the visitor talk. And while she was one to walk with caution where people with ill-intention were concerned, there was something in this woman's voice and her eyes.
She wasn't sure how to un-crease her heart after so many years of careless handling. But she was finding that taking her time with things and people she loved- books, coffee, lovingly-made food and the Lost Souls Coven- had started making her feel less tidy in the most life-giving way.
And she had an urging as she looked at her phone and realized she was late, that this woman could use a dose of that too.
The sound of footsteps stopped them as they froze and turned, prepared to see an unfriendly witch walk through the woods.
Instead, a pretty blonde stepped out and looked at the group of women, her face open and in the silence she held up a crystal glass she had brought.
"Jessica!" Kelsea exclaimed.
Crystal clapped her hands and waved her into their group. "Welcome, darling. Thanks for coming."
Jessica hesitated by the tree line and Crystal tilted to the side, raising a perfect eyebrow in question.
"I, uh, brought someone," she said.
Behind her someone no one expected to see came into view. She looked at them with a critical eye, her nose turned up just the slightest.
"What is she doing here?" Tilly murmured to Kelsea who shook her head slowly, her expression in awe.
Jen was never one to hide her thoughts from her face and that was no exception here.
And Ursula felt a particular pang of anger, something she didn't readily lay out in public often, but today her best friend was in handcuffs and her friends were being targeted, so this was different.
"I am going to give you one chance to give us a reason to let you walk into our circle, Carol. Because your words and assumptions have hurt us and turned a bad light on us, when we didn't deserve it. Now my closest friend is locked up, and we have to clean up a mess that isn't ours."
Carol regarded her, that critical edge never leaving her face.
Breaths were held. Even the cursed starlings quieted.
"I invited her, and her flock of birds," Jessica said. "You once all took a chance on me, even though I had also hurt you. And being given that chance changed my life, for the better. I talked with Carol and she's agreed to give this a chance."
Jen's burst of laughter shot through the sun-streaked fog. "Oh yeah? How benevolent of you," she said sarcastically. "I lost half of my business because of your articles."
"And I lost a lot of credit and have been pulled back at the station," Tilly added.
The forest erupted in morning sounds again.
All women stood there, at a standstill, no one moving and no one talking. The cry of starlings settled down until the low croaking hum of the bullfrogs was the only sound.
Then Carol lifted a clear wine glass, and said, "I am a journalist, and I hold myself to a high standard of ethical storytelling.
Which I do not believe I adhered to in the last months.
There's more to the story and something came to light to make me question myself and the things I wrote.
I still don't know what to make of you, and whatever this is, but I want to find out for myself.
If I eat my words, then I eat my words, no matter how bitter.
" She looked up into the tree branches then back at them.
"And the horde of birds following me everywhere is getting old. "
Ursula smiled and Jen snorted.
They slid looks around the graves, silently speaking, silently making a call.
But ultimately they looked to Ursula, who had the most at stake.
She turned to fully face the woman and walked toward her with careful, steady steps.
She pulled the gold hawk from the top of the bourbon bottle, a plunk loud, and filled her glass.
"Then welcome to our coven, Carol Weatherby. I do hope you enjoy the taste of bitterness."
Carol smiled, the first friendly thing Ursula had experienced from her yet, and she clinked her glass against Ursula's before they shared a toast.
"We'll see," she remarked, her tone still sharp.
"To bitterness," Ursula replied, her eyes not wavering from Carol's as she took a challenging sip.
And then seven women circled around the graveyard amongst unsettled souls and birds who sang their fury. They raised their glasses to the sun who praised them with her light.
Crystal spoke in an even, dulcet tone as she spoke of the ancient magic that lived there between the snapdragons and the blades of grass, in the rings of the trees and the fog that had come to visit.
The souls that they had laid to rest not long ago had found their home here and stayed, but now they joined these women in a song that is so bold and so feminine that it is its own language: ushering in healing while holding a line of defense against darkness that would see them divide.
Different generations held hands tonight. Different beliefs and different fears collided to create a powerful circle of one thing: a fight for hope.
The powers of the world have spent so much energy in the division of women, because when they come together, regardless of age or background or beliefs, something beyond understanding happens and it's dangerous. It's inconvenient.
Inconvenience is a powerful thing.
Like a hair stuck to your shirt, tickling the back of the arm.
A gnat circling your head when trying to find a moment of peace in the garden.
A woman speaking truth and unfurling herself to no longer be small.
The murmuration of starlings quieted and a watchful hawk sat high above them as something was created there on that hallowed ground, as the fog swirled and danced with found souls and women who knew the cost of not uniting.
It was magic. The magic flowed out of that place, traveling the way magic does; with intention and purpose on the wings of birds no longer caught in a hex, in the twinkling stars unseen in the sunlit sky, and in the thick fog that wove its way through town touching those going about their days who fell into the crosshairs of an angry, vengeful witch.
"What now?"
"Now," Crystal replied sagely, "we invite a certain witch to claim what she thinks is hers."
"But, if Cassidy deals with dark magic like you said," Tilly hedged carefully, "how will this magic draw her in?"
"I have something for that," Ursula stepped forward with her fist out.
From it dropped a silver necklace with a heart locket and they watched as it dangled in the sparse rays of sunlight the trees allowed in.
"Turns out our lost souls have been looking out for us," she said, her eyes looking up to a certain hawk sitting on a branch watching closely.
Crystal fingered the locket, running her thumb over the engraved "C" and she smiled. "This will do just fine."
Jen finished her drink and set the glass on top of one of the gravestones. Tilly followed, then the other women until seven glasses were sitting there as an offering.
Carol Weatherby wouldn't admit that she had been moved from a place of intellect and facts to an openness of 'the other'.
She held hands with women she had shamed in print, and watched in awe as a woman she had always been curious about spoke of ancient things and unity and she wondered if this was how some people felt in church: a yearning to be a part of something greater than them.
A community that would hold you up when you fell and a community that would raise up mourning pleas to a power above them on behalf of others.
There was something quite interesting about looking around and seeing others experiencing the same thing as you and knowing that you're not alone.
She wouldn't say she was convinced of anything concrete, but she could chew on the idea that these women were good.
Goodness was too fragile a thing anymore and she had forgotten to look for it.
That had come at a price.
And what she had uncovered while doing her journalistic investigating had been rather damning, and not against this group of women.
"I rented out The Crescent Inn for us. We can spend the day there while our magic works," Crystal announced. They couldn't stay here for what was to happen.
And with that the women left the graveyard to weave its magic and pour it through the ground and into the veins of the plants and the foundation of the house.
"Come with us?" Ursula asked Carol.
"I kind of have a troupe of angry birds," she said.
"We took care of them," she replied and they both looked up into the trees as they walked, where the starlings watched her quietly, their white-speckled bodies bright in the shadows. But they didn't follow this time.
"I feel foolish and I owe you more than an article correcting my mistakes."
"Well, I'll take the article and be done with it." She tweaked her head thoughtfully. "You know, Eloise said she would haunt you if she died."
"Me?" Carol's question was more than curious. She wondered about the last time someone had thought so fiercely about her.
"Yeah," Ursula nodded, then smiled broadly. "She's the best."
Carol laughed. She watched the woman who had just stood in a graveyard to call on magic to heal their town, walk alongside her as though she hadn't written terrible things about her and her friends. This woman carried magic.
"I don't know what to do with this," Carol whispered suddenly somber.
She smiled. Ursula didn't need to ask her what this was.
"Yeah. Grace can taste bitter if you're used to condemnation."
"While that is wholesome, I think I have a way to repay your kindness," Carol said. "A big way." She looked to Jen. "But, there's something you should know."
Jen pointed to herself. "Something I should know?"
Carol nodded slowly. "Yeah. And you won't like it. And we may want to head to the station before the inn."