Chapter 15 Dark Conversations
Tilly woke up somewhere cooler, the air was filled with brine and wet wood. When she looked around, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, she recognized only that she was staring up at trees hanging over her. They bent like friends anxiously waiting for her to wake up.
"Sorry about the headache," a familiar voice cooed.
And then she realized she did in fact have a headache. She reached up, feeling with tentative fingers, hoping not to find a bump or gash. Her hair was matted, and she felt mud where her head had lain heavy before waking.
"What is going on?"
Three women sat on a log, watching carefully through the fog.
It was the setup of a dark fairytale nursery rhyme.
"We're here in Salem to look into strange happenings."
Her eyes finally reset to this dark stage, to Astra and her two friends sitting tall and straight on a fallen tree. Their posture looked unyielding, as though they'd never learned how to relax.
"Alright," she said carefully as she pulled in a deep breath of thick, forest air. Her headache was small, but pulsing steadily. She thought of their dinner party visit. "So, what? You're here to make sure nothing incredibly weird is happening? Like, a cult?"
Astra tilted her head and then walked to where Tilly sat on the muddy ground. She stared up at the woman, a rush of fear closing around her, uncertainty; she was a small, caged animal. It brought her back to that morning in the closet.
She slowly lowered herself to a crouching position. Tilly held her breath.
She wondered if this witch, who held a position in a governing coven they knew nothing about, could harm her.
She wondered if she knew that magic was buried here. If she knew what The Lost Souls House was or the ghosts it housed, and that Tilly and her friends could sense each other's feelings across town, or that the house could change its temperature based on their moods.
She may have read articles about a pink teenage boy, or a murmuring of starlings chasing a woman.
"We dance around what we are." Astrid's words floated around her.
That headache pulsed a little harder, and her heartbeat picked up.
She was looking at her fingernails, and Tilly watched the woman wearing a three-piece suit with her dark hair perfectly slicked into a controlled bun, wondering what magic looked like in her hands.
It couldn't be the wild thing that Ursula knew in her garden or the complexity of Eloise's gift of smell.
"What do you mean?"
Another tilt of her head. The shadows of the trees slanted across her angular face in a menacing caricature.
"You carry magic inside of you."
Tilly froze.
She leaned forward, and her voice dropped lower. "You're a witch. I'm a witch. Your friends are witches. And we dance around the truth."
"Because..." Tilly hedged, licked her cracked lip that tasted like blood had flowed then stopped as the body intended.
"Because," Astra continued for her. "The truth for us will not set us free. It will burn us."
The words were thrown to the ground, a gauntlet, a threat, a damning promise. And they lived there on the ground between them. The two behind her rose from the fallen tree until they were Astra's shadows. Faces tight, eyes dark.
"But you, with your novice fingers merely dipped in a magic you do not understand?" She narrowed her eyes with a skilled smile meant to intimidate. And it worked. "You threaten everything we have worked thousands of years to protect. For what? Garden parties and ghost stories?"
Tilly kept silent. The feline smile widened. "Yes. Little witches running around a haunted town, casting spells and wreaking havoc." Her singsong voice belied the danger Tilly knew was lurking. Then her eyes turned fierce and hard. "But we cannot have that, Tilly."
She flinched at the words, at her own name hurled at her like a curse.
"No," she shook her head again. "No one is running around casting spells. You have it wrong."
She stood slowly. Tilly was looking at the three tall women, damning her with their eyes and silence.
"I think," Astra's head cocked, her eyes holding Tilly's in challenge, "that your town will find that they do not appreciate being played with by a small coven of women."
"What are you talking about?"A swelling filled Tilly's stomach, a coldness filled her limbs as the three stepped forward. She stumbled back, an invisible hand pressing her back down to the ground.
"Interesting thing about humans. Making women the enemy requires little campaigning.
It has been etched into their bones to hate the ones who carry their bloodline.
One of life's great mysteries, really. Is it because women are a threat with all of that power?
" She shrugged, the indifference slicing through Tilly's stomach.
"But to make a woman who truly holds magic in her belly the enemy," Astra laughed.
Her white teeth gleamed, and Tilly was chilled by the way that her cruelty could be wrapped in laughter.
When Astra leaned down, her voice dropping low, Tilly held her breath as she said, "Well, the world is just begging us to give them those women to hate. "
The point of Astra's black boot pressed firmly into her thigh, the skin and muscle cried out at the contact, and something flashed in her eyes, making her cry out and double over. That blackness fell over her in a falling trap, cold and unyielding. Her head pounded.
She saw the grandmother clock's gothic tower.
Chaos, upheaval, danger.
She heard a voice, so familiar and so shrill.
It wove through her mind on an endless loop of unkindness she knew intimately.
Keep quiet.
Ugly, overweight, too much.
Don't be too emotional.
When a cold hand pressed against her cheek, she opened her eyes wide, pain searing her as she looked into Astra's brown-eyed study of her.
Something was off. The air shifted, taking a moment to pause before it changed direction and dropped noticeable goose-flesh degrees.
She cried out, closing her eyes tightly as images flashed behind closed lids.
She couldn't make sense of them but they collected in her mind as the pain and coldness shot through, shocking her system.
Birds collectively let out their distinct caws, screeches, and some opened their beaks with song.
Bullfrogs bellowed from where they hid under boulders and plump ferns.
A red fox with knee-high black socks and a pointed face crawled out of a hollow log, its face raised to the tops of the trees in a low bark that turned high and loud in a scream that made Tilly's hair along her arms and fingers stand on end.
The cacophony of the forest was a battle cry.
The sound of gently creeping frost pulled her eyes up to see sparkling white cover the tips of the green leaves, slowly moving in towards the trunks of large trees. The summer-humid moss that lay languid on large rocks and over fallen trees looked like a woman embracing her grey roots.
Astra's face took on a look of fear as she froze at the changes to the forest around them. Then she stood from her crouched position as the other two women pushed themselves shoulder-to-shoulder. She communicated without words as they made a decision.
One more pointed look down at Tilly, Astra spoke with her eyes: a warning with a glint of promise that landed how Tilly imagined she intended.
And then they were off, running gracefully through the woods at a cadence that spoke of practiced synchronization. They were nearly one form split into three.
When the sound of a stick breaking behind her reached her ears, she turned and shot up to standing so quickly that her vision just barely caught up with the movement. Her eyes were wide, hands up for defense, heart pumping.
The chief stood there watching her with a calm air, his large hands moving slowly from his sides into a sign of peace.
"You're okay," his deep voice slid through the dark space and landed on her, warm in this sudden cold landscape. "I'm going to walk toward you slowly. Is that alright?"
Her chest heaved as the sounds of the forest were still loud and raging. The air around them must have been kissed by winter as her muscles pulled tightly, trying to fight for warmth.
But she nodded slowly because there was something about him that made her heart slow, her limbs not hold themselves nearly as tightly.
And then he was in front of her and his eyes roved over her face and down her figure until they were back at her eyes with relief.
"I need to touch you."
His words landed gentle but firm. A promise had been given to her, and he was asking her to give him permission and warning her that he would break it if not.
And she had a feeling that his large, concrete man, vampire, otherworldly creature of danger, would feel pain at breaking a promise. That alone steadied her heart, her breathing, and when she barely moved her head in consent, her body was pulled into his without apology.
She was surrounded by him.
His warmth was unyielding, and his strength soaked into her skin, moving through her body until she felt strong.
She'd held herself distant, feeling vertiginous around this man for months, and in this moment, with the forest crying out and the world pressing in as her fear and anxiety rose inside of her, she let go.
She turned her face until she pressed her nose into the soft white t-shirt that smelled like dryer sheets and summer.
The sounds of the forest gave out. The birds closed their beaks and settled into the trees and bushes.
The red fox flicked its tail and nodded its pointed white chin to the pair standing together before finding its sleeping place in the hollow log.
And the bullfrogs' balloon throats relaxed as they nestled into their homes of mud under boulders.
And whatever whisper of icy cold had breathed over the forest thawed. Summer took its full place again with thick air and humming crickets.