Chapter 23
HARPER
The car dies a day over the state border into Maine.
My guides have been leading me along progressively smaller and more obscure roads and tracks, so I figure this is another sign, and abandon the vehicle.
I’ve been making such slow progress I figure it can’t be much worse on foot.
But actually, yes, it is. I guess that’s what comes of using the Greenmagic. I’m on Mother Nature’s clock.
I stick to my inverted schedule even though it means travelling on foot by night.
The first time I lie down to sleep as the sun is hoisting itself high, I crawl into the shade at the edge of a mixed evergreen and deciduous forest. Above, pine needles card daylight into golden strands that thread into the tapestry of flowers woven thickly below.
Monarch butterflies dance, their stained-glass wings the exact burnt-umber shade of the milkweed flowers that lure them.
Bee balm’s spidery mauve blooms scent the air with hot mint.
I recognise both flowers from my mother’s glasshouse behind her workroom, and from Jonah’s at Stoneacre. They have excellent magical properties.
Starcross is wrapped in a grocery store bag inside my backpack.
With a few spare T-shirts and panties on top, it makes a surprisingly comfortable pillow.
Perhaps it’s that which fills my sleep with dreams. Perhaps it’s the potent flowers.
Maybe it’s the cocoon of Greenmagic in which I’ve wrapped myself, unrolling mile by mile on this journey.
But with a jolt that doesn’t wake me, yet awakens me, I realise I’m there again. That strange farmstead.
I’m watching the same boy from before, running through the wild flowers beneath the apple trees.
He’s playing a game of tag with his friends.
Tom! one yells at him. Try and catch me, Tommy!
The boy is the youngest of them all, cheeks pink beneath his plentiful freckles.
He puffs tawny hair out of his eyes as he runs, and just as he’s looking discouraged and despairing of ever catching one of the other players, a girl pretends to trip – it’s plain to me she’s pretending, but Tom’s eyes light up with his opportunity – and he dashes over to tag her before running away shrieking with joy.
I’ve spent hours watching him play like this, I realise.
And could watch with perfect contentment for many more.
But all around me is a hive of activity, drawing my attention in different directions.
Over by the porch, a middle-aged man with untucked shirttails, suspenders holding up knee-patched trousers, and a carelessly woven straw hat is showily chopping wood – with magic.
He brings down a hand edge-on, and the block of wood placed upon a wide stump jumps up in two hewn pieces.
As the small group of adults resting in the shade applaud, a woman seated at a loom under the veranda cries out Well, beat this, Greggory Swinson!
and gestures at her loom where the shuttle – which I see now she’s not touching at all – speeds up until it flies through the threads almost too fast to see.
Their spectators begin to clap in time with her loom’s frenzied traverses, the man matching his chopping to her pace. Even the children stop their game and dash over, entertained to see their elders clapping and laughing.
Ah, I can’t keep up, cries Greggory, swiping a hand across his brow.
Who can keep up with our Joan? Lend me your aid, fellas.
I’ll not be bested. And two of the men step to his side and do something that if the cops saw, would have them all three in jail.
They put their hands on his shoulders and lend him their magic.
Too much! he cries, and the log set upon the chopping block explodes in a dusty firework of sawdust that rains down on the whole company.
There’s a din of coughing and chortling as people wipe pasty tears of saltwater and dust from their eyes.
You useless baggage! bellows the woman at the loom as she beats the cloth on her frame and great pine-fragrant puffs billow up.
The man jumps onto the porch lip beside her and slips an arm around her waist. Wifey still loves me, though!
he declares. The twin girls I saw last time take over battering the loom with a hooped wicker carpet-beater, as the man bends his wife down into a dipped kiss.
Tommy is as caught up in the moment as everyone, but a pang shoots through me as I watch him caper and kick through the dust, ducking away from the bigger boy who’s trying to stuff a handful of it down his neck.
He has no magic, I think. He doesn’t know it yet. Will it break his heart when he understands he’s not like the others? Why does the Gift so often skip generations and cause such disappointment and breed resentment? My mother hated me for my talent.
No. That’s not right. My mother is a witch and so am I. It’s Mom’s mom who wasn’t magical. Who dumped her on Great-Gramma Serafina and moved as far away as she could, right down to Florida.
Grandma! Grandma! Tommy is yelling, as he skips towards a figure on the porch.
The woman shuffles from the shade into the light, and I gasp, because that’s Mom.
Grown old and a little stooped, but her once-fiery hair is still piled thickly on her scalp, so shot through with silver now it’s the colour of over-polished copper.
She wears a well-scrubbed apron over her big bell skirt, though even from here I can see faint stains from brewing.
She reaches out both arms as my boy throws himself against her skirts.
Holds him under the chin to admire his eager little face.
Runs a hand through his hair and pulls a boiled sweet from her pocket and pops it in his grinning mouth.
Wait. My boy?
As if she heard me, the woman on the porch looks up and straight into my eyes.
And I realise two things. That’s not Sarah Fenn. And her expression has shifted abruptly. It’s no longer fond indulgence.
It’s wariness. It’s almost like fear.
‘Ah!’
I jerk awake to a sharp digging at my side and a massive presence looming over me.
Hot, rank breath laves my face, and there’s a stink of fur.
A snort hits me with the force of an open palm.
A hairy lip brushes the back of my hand and I almost scream.
Another snort has me cringeing away, my mind whirling. Where am I? When?
My head drops off its grimoire pillow. A heavy hoof presses too close against my vulnerable back. Something massive and powerful tears at the flowers around me, releasing scent into the mild evening air. The hoof paws again, harder and closer, and my heart is jumping like a jackrabbit.
A moose. Goddess, it’s a moose.
Mud covers its hide, where the creature has wallowed to keep the flies off, and wetness drips onto my cheek. It’s waiting, I realise, as I lie on my back gazing up in disbelief.
This is my latest guide.