Chapter 9 #2
I could tell Leila was intrigued, but she didn't press me for an explanation. She just gave a good-natured shrug and led the way through a curtain beaded with pieces of sea glass. I followed on her heels, letting the cool, smooth sea glass brush over me.
The living room we entered was also very cozy, dominated by an oversized green velvet sofa and two somewhat shabby armchairs, all half-buried in a mismatched collection of pillows and throw blankets.
Candles flickered from every corner of the space, clustered in gold candle holders of various heights like little glowing, waxen families.
A fire crackled merrily in a fireplace against the back wall beneath a mantel carved of driftwood.
A sinuous tendril of steam rose from the top of a teapot shaped like a toadstool on the coffee table.
I wished more than anything that I could just sit down in this room with Leila and have a cozy cup of tea, instead of facing whatever awaited me in the room beyond.
But Leila was already peeking her head through the doorway and engaging in a whispered conversation.
I strained to make out the other voice, but couldn't hear a thing.
Leila reached her arm through the doorway, took something, and then stepped back into the living room, holding it out to me.
I stared uncomprehendingly at it. It was a sort of rope, braided from a dozen different strands of multi-colored ribbons and strips of fabric.
"Granny Nightjar says to wrap it three times around whatever you've got in that bag," Leila said.
My heart stuttered in my chest. There were many things in my bag, but I instinctively knew which thing she meant.
I took the rope from Leila's hands, placed my bag on the floor, opened it, and pulled the mirror out, making sure it was still completely wrapped in the sweatshirt. I could feel Leila’s intensely curious stare on the back of my neck, but she didn’t ask the obvious question.
Maybe she was used to people smuggling dubious objects into Granny Nightjar’s studio.
This made me feel a tiny bit better… like at least Granny Nightjar would understand what the hell was going on.
I wrapped the makeshift rope around the mirror three times. Then I looked up at Leila.
“Knot it,” she advised me. “Tightly.”
I did as she told me, tugging the knot as snug as I could.
As soon as I pulled my hands away from the rope, I felt an odd shift in the atmosphere, like the air, which had been thick before, was lighter now, slipping down into my lungs with more ease.
I looked up at Leila again in wonder, and she nodded in satisfaction.
“That’s better, isn’t it?” she said.
“Yeah, it is.”
“Good. Right, well, she’s ready for you,” Leila said, and gestured to the doorway.
“Are… are you coming with me?” I asked, and was mortified to hear my voice squeak out about an octave higher than usual.
Leila’s answering smile was a little too understanding. “No. Too many people cloud the energy, making it harder to read. It’ll just be you and Granny.”
“Swell,” I muttered and, sucking in a deep breath, I walked through the curtain Leila held aside for me. As I passed her, she whispered to me.
“Make sure you tell the truth. She’ll know if you don’t, and she doesn’t traffic in lies.”
I had no idea how to respond to that, so I just nodded.
I hadn’t intended to lie to Granny Nightjar—after all, how could she help me figure out what’s going on if I don’t tell her the truth?
Still, I took Leila’s warning seriously.
This might be my only chance to consult a spirit witch who wouldn’t go running to my family to tell them what was going on, and I wasn’t going to blow it.
On the other side of the curtain, the light was dim, thick with the heady, cloying perfume of incense that hung like a low cloud over everything.
The room was small and narrow, with a door on the opposite wall that made me wonder if it had once been a hallway instead of a proper room.
The walls were draped in deep purple velvet curtains embroidered with constellations in twinkling gold thread.
From the center of the ceiling hung an enormous chandelier, much too large for the space, lit with real candles that dripped misshapen trails of black wax.
The flames of the candles looked…wrong. They didn’t flicker the way I expected candle flames to.
Rather than dancing, the tiny plumes of fire perched tall and motionless on the tops of the candles.
I stared at them, transfixed for a moment before I was able to tear my eyes from them and focus on the table beneath and, more importantly, the figure sitting behind it.
A small round table draped in a collection of fringed shawls squatted right under the chandelier.
There was only one object on the table: a black velvet pouch tied with frayed blue ribbon, which I assumed contained the tarot deck.
In a faded green wingback chair behind this deck of cards sat Granny Nightjar.
Or rather, I assumed it was Granny Nightjar.
The truth was that it could have been anyone, because the figure was draped from head to toe in a black lace shawl that obscured every identifying feature except for her size, which was so unexpectedly small that I would have assumed it was a child hiding beneath rather than an adult.
“What took you so long, Little Bird?”
The voice was a shock, ringing through the air like the tinkling of bells: high, clear, and almost musical. It didn’t sound at all like an old woman’s voice—I expected something more quavery or croaky. But even more shocking were the words—she called me Little Bird, just like Asteria.
And someone else…
I tried to answer, but my mouth had gone so dry I nearly gagged. I licked my lips and swallowed hard against sudden fear.
“How did you… why did you call me that?”
The head beneath the shawl cocked to one side, considering.
“It came to me,” Granny Nightjar said, “and it felt… true.”
It came to you from where? I wanted to ask, but I choked the question back, both because I feared the answer, and also because I wasn’t confident she would answer at all.
“Before you sit,” she went on in her strange, tuneful voice, “the mirror. Place it over there, in the Circle.” She raised a frail, milky-pale hand and pointed toward the corner of the room just behind me.
I wanted to ask how she knew I’d brought a mirror, but the question felt pointless.
This woman just… knew things. I reached back into my bag, pulled out the mirror, still wrapped and bound tightly, and placed it as she requested within the boundary of a circle that had been permanently carved into the floorboards of the room.
A number of symbols, some of them runes, others crude drawings, had been carved around the borders of the Circle.
I turned back to the table to find that the chair across from Granny Nightjar had been pulled out for me like an invitation, though I hadn’t heard her or the chair move.
Feeling more uneasy by the second, I lowered myself into the chair, a spindly wooden thing that looked too rickety to hold me.
I perched on the very edge, and though the chair wobbled and creaked, it didn’t collapse.
A little wave of dizziness swept over me, and I realized that I’d been holding my breath since she’d mentioned the mirror.
I sucked in a few ragged gasps of air, trying to calm myself.
“There now,” Granny Nightjar said, folding her hands over the tarot pouch, and focusing unseen eyes on me. “What brings you to see me, Wren Vesper?”
I hesitated. I was sure she already knew why I was there. Maybe she just wanted to hear it in my own words. Maybe this was a test to see if I would tell her the truth.
“It’s… about the Darkness,” I began lamely.
“Mm-hmm,” she said, and the head beneath the veil nodded once.
“It wants me, the way it wanted Sarah Claire,” I said, somehow knowing that this would make sense to her. “And I want to understand it better. To be prepared.”
“You seek knowledge of your foe,” Granny Nightjar said.
“Yes,” I said, gaining a bit of confidence now. “I can’t fight against something I don’t understand. And I think that’s been part of the problem all along. Everyone knows what the Darkness wants, but not what it is.”
“You have already begun your search for this understanding?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been using divination, but I’m terrible at it, so—”
“You lack skill, not power,” Granny Nightjar said sharply. “Understand that difference, or your doubt will poison your study and render your attempts fruitless.”
It came out like a reprimand, but I didn’t feel shamed. On the contrary, I felt bolstered. She spoke the words with such conviction that I had no choice but to take them at face value. I remembered Leila’s words: Granny Nightjar doesn’t traffic in lies.
“Okay, well, anyway, because I’m just starting to learn, I don’t always get answers, not ones that I can interpret, anyway.”
“But you did.”
“I did… what?”
“You divined something, despite your inexperience. I can see that in the color of your eyes.”
I blinked. “Huh?”
But Granny Nightjar didn’t seem at all inclined to explain. She sat silently, waiting.
“Um, okay, well, I tried the rune stones and bird bones that my aunt suggested. I always ask the same question: where is the Darkness? And this time, when I looked into the bowl, I thought… well, the arrangement made sense to me…”
“If it is clear to you, then it is an answer. What was it?”
“It told me I had to… to take a journey into the past.”
“Mmm… yes, indeed. Yes, yes, yes…”
Then Granny Nightjar began to sing.