by Indie Gantz
“About Wiccanism or the Divine Spirit?” Oleander asks, his hands back in the dirt.
“Well, the fact that I don’t understand how those two things are different, probably both,” I reply with a self-deprecating laugh. Oleander smiles.
“I’ll set you up,” he assures me. “Don’t worry.”
“Thanks.” I push myself off of the ground and brush the dirt off my pants. “Need some help?”
“Sure,” Oleander replies, shrugging. “I didn’t come out to do this, just thought I’d make myself busy.”
“Then why did you come out here?” I zero in on an oregano bush with browning leaves on the left side. Concentrating, I build up more chlorophyll in the leaves then pull water up through its roots.
“Well, I thought that’d be fairly obvious.” He stops his work and looks over at me sheepishly.
“Oh.” I say dumbly, doing a very good imitation of Tirigan as I blink down at the bush. He hums softly, but says nothing more.
We work in silence tending the garden. I pull weeds by hand and help Oleander replant a few basil plants into a sunnier area of the garden. He grabs a basket from the porch and artfully collects kale and lettuce without touching them, while I pick ripe tomatoes from the vine.
It’s nice having something to do with my hands that doesn’t involve holding a book. I like working outside and letting my mind concentrate only on what’s in front of me. The silence isn’t strained; it’s comfortable, as if practiced somehow.
Everything feels that way with Oleander. Simple. Straightforward. Peaceful. It’s not like the psychological battlefield I feel like I enter every time I’m around Kor, or the matriarchal love I wrap myself in around Vi. And it’s different than the comfort I feel around Avias and Bo. They’re easy to be with, easy to laugh with, but when I’m with Oleander, serenity crawls under my skin, and it doesn’t unnerve me. It makes me feel stronger. Wiser. I like the person I am when I’m with him.
Soon the basket is full and the garden is properly tended. Oleander flops down into the grass, belly up and spread-eagle. I laugh into a handful of turnips then place them in the basket.
Looking down at the impressively tall Gyan, I can’t help but admire him. His eyes are closed, his hair fanned out around his head. His soft blondish brown curls reflect the early morning sun and shine like a halo. A shadow casts off his sharp jaw line, dimming the tiny lift on the left side of his mouth.
I follow the lines of his neck down to his collar bones, which are exposed under the floral-patterned shirt he’s wearing. He hasn’t bothered to button it all the way, leaving it to hang open slightly from the bottom, exposing a hint of black ink on his abdomen. It matches the darkness of his jeans which fit so tightly, I’m not entirely sure how he got himself into them. His feet are large, dirty, and bare, as per usual.
The look suits him, but I have a feeling any look would suit him. Oleander’s rather beautiful.
“Nap time?” I ask, forcing myself out of my long stare.
“Suppose,” he says lazily in return. One eye peeks open. “Care to join me?”
The space next to him looks inviting, although pretty much any flat surface would look good right now. I’m exhausted from the studying, the worrying, and the… well, the everything. I could use some more sleep.
“Sure,” I reply with a shrug and lay down in the grass next to him. The grass is cool as it tickles my bare neck and arms, but I welcome the sensation. “Think we could get a few minutes in before Robin comes out to perform his morning show?”
The young boy likes to come outside every morning to practice the variety show he puts on for us nearly every night. He dresses up in Bo and Vi’s clothes and sings songs while throwing around scarves and tumbling in the grass.
“I’d wager we have at least fifteen minutes before Robbie makes his presence known.” Oleander’s voice is thick with sleep already, his words coming out even slower than usual. “Besides, he may start with his latest rendition of Sunny Time Neighbors, and, I, for one, wouldn’t mind waking up to it.”
I laugh, even though I haven’t a clue what song the Gyan is referencing. “I’m sure it’d be worth it.”
Oleander hums his agreement next to me, and I turn my head and open my eyes to look at him. His head’s turned away from me, but I can see his eyes are still closed, his chest rising and falling at a steady rate. I watch him until the familiar low growling sound starts to emanate from his throat.
Stifling a laugh, I stash away my newly acquired knowledge of Oleander’s near narcolepsy. My eyes find the sky again, but it isn’t long before Oleander’s soft snoring lulls me to sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Monkey’s Cup
Robin does wake us, but instead of being pulled out of slumber by a song, we’re awoken by scarves being wrapped around our ankles.
As soon as I realize what’s happening, any anxiety I feel at being bound is calmed by the quiet laughter Robin is unable to suppress. I pretend to continue to sleep so he can finish tying my legs together. And he doesn’t stop there. The next thing I know my wrist is being tied with Oleander’s. There’s a distinct lack of snoring, plus a quiet chuckle beside me.
A few seconds later, Robin starts singing loudly and Oleander and I both jolt up theatrically. I try to stand up, but I’m dragged back down by our bound wrists and we tangle together in the grass. Robin laughs maniacally and dances around us.
“I trapped you! I trapped you both!”
“That you did!” Oleander lets out a deep sigh and barely contains his fond smile. “You absolute villain!”
“Diabolical!” I join in.
“I got Bo, too. She just doesn’t know it yet,” Robin boasts, his eyebrows wagging dramatically.
“Well, how about you go about untying us, and I promise to protect you from her wrath later?” Oleander requests with a smile. Robin seems to weigh his options before agreeing. I thank him once my legs are free, joining Oleander in standing.
“She should be up any minute,” Robin whispers, looking back at the house. “I wanna be there when she does.” Then he’s off, running into the house at full speed, which is impressive considering the pair of oversized heels he’s wearing.
“He’s such a character,” I say, laughing.
“This house is full of characters,” Oleander replies with a grin.
“At least we’re never bored.” I push away that voice I hear when I’m enjoying myself too much. The voice that says, Don’t get too close. This is all temporary.
“Definitely not,” Oleander wipes his eyes and stretches grandly, his long lean torso extending as his arms reach into the sky. “Up for a bit of practice?”
“I guess so,” I respond casually, yawning into a stretch of my own. “What did you have in mind?”
Oleander shrugs, but his eyes twinkle with a plan. He bends down after a moment, laying his hands on the ground, and closing his eyes. Seconds later the ground around me starts to shake softly. It’s very faint, a quiet vibration. Then green stems begin to poke through the grass around me. Oleander looks up at me with a smile as leaves and flower buds sprout from the stems.
“Nice,” I say, sucking in a breath as I take in the flowers’ beauty. “What are they?”
“Snapdragons,” Oleander answers, standing up. “Vi’s favorite.”
“They’re pretty,” I bend down and look closer at the flower. The petals hang off the side of the stems like little bells. Multicolored white petals fade into pink or purple. “How did you isolate them from other flowers in order to bring them up?”
“Well,” Oleander sits back down on the ground and gestures for me to join him. “For one, I knew they were under there.” He smirks. “Vi planted the seeds just a few weeks ago.”
“That feels like cheating.”
“We can’t simply bring up whatever we want, Charlie,” Oleander replies. “We can only manipulate what’s already there.”
“That makes sense, I guess,” I reply, slightly disap
pointed.
“For example,” Oleander waves his hand over the grass and a dandelion grows out of the ground and becomes twice the size of the snapdragons. “I’d expect a weed such as this to live in a garden, but I didn’t know the exact spot it would grow from. I merely concentrated my energy on growing a dandelion and the earth produced one out of a seed that was already there.”
“You try,” Oleander coaxes, pulling his knees closer to his chest and clasping his hand around his wrist. “Pull another dandelion up. Try not to think about reaching for it so much as letting it come to you.”
“All right.” I take a closer look at the yellow weed Oleander had grown, and then close my eyes to focus. I place my hand in the grass and channel my energy toward the ground. Soon, a familiar coolness spread through my hand. I open my eyes to find a fresh dandelion right next to my pinky finger.
“Well done,” Oleander encourages. “Anything else?”
I chuckle at his challenge and shrug. “I don’t know what to try.”
“Yeah, it’s difficult at first, learning what you can and can’t pull up at any given spot on Earth. That’s why it’s good to know your botany.”
“Well, with everything else going on, there hasn’t been much time for flowers.” My reply comes out a little more defensive than I mean it to, but when I catch Oleander’s eye, he doesn’t look bothered. Instead, his eyes are soft and understanding.
“There’s no rush. Don’t concern yourself with time tables and limits. She’ll give you what you need when you’re ready to receive it.” Oleander keeps his eyes on mine, his expression comforting as he unclasps his wrist and places a hand on my arm. “Go on, there’s no harm in trying… except, well, except for that time you sort of blew yourself up. It’s probably best not to try that again.”
My mouth drops open. Besides a mostly quiet lecture from Kor and Vi, and the mind-lashing I received from Tirigan, no one else has mentioned my serious misstep. Words form before my brain has a chance to fully process the moment.
“I’m sorry,” I reply, embarrassed. “I didn’t… I mean, it was so stupid and I just—”
Oleander stops me with a raised hand and a kind smile.
“No worries, Charlie. I’m just glad you didn’t suffer any permanent damage.” He reaches across and gently tugs on the ends of my hair. “And if I haven’t said so yet, I like this.”
With the back of his hand grazing my cheek. I’m very grateful Oleander can’t read body temperatures.
“Thank you,” I reply, looking down at the snapdragon and wanting desperately to change the subject.
“Anytime.”
Bravely, I look back up and meet Oleander’s gaze. Something in the air shifts. My heart beats faster, louder, in my chest. My stomach flips and… and it’s all so new.
After a moment, Oleander breaks the silence but doesn’t take his eyes off me. “So, let’s see what you got.”
I close my eyes and try to concentrate, my lips still carrying a private smile. What should I try?
I picture different flowers I’ve seen in my parents’ photos or in books I’ve read, but I have no way of knowing if they can be pulled up from where we are. I don’t know what’s indigenous to Pacoa.
I’m about to just give up and have him tell me what to try, when a memory floats inside my mind. There was a framed photo of a flower in the bathroom of our trailer that I always thought was kind of ugly. Shaped like a Calla Lily, the flower in the photo was green with brown lines around its edges and blotches of brown spots towards the center. It wasn’t incredibly pleasant to look at. Calla disagreed, of course, which would explain why she chose to frame it and put it up. I can’t remember what she called it, but I do remember laughing at it, like it was the silliest name in the world for a flower. The memory transforms my faint smile into a gloomy frown.
I know I can’t use this flower to practice, since I’m fairly certain it’s a tropical flower and wouldn’t be found in this region, but I can’t help but linger on the flower’s appearance. It’s a connection to my mother, which is hard to let go of at the moment.
Eyes still closed, I’m just about to push away thoughts of Calla and ugly tropical flowers, when I feel the hand I’ve placed in the grass grow cool again. My eyes fly open as a hearty and thick green stalk of a stem begins to grow just in front of my hand.
“There you go...” Oleander’s excited voice trails off as the stem continues to lengthen. His face grows confused, obviously unsure of what he’s seeing.
The stem sprouts a few leaves, and then the flower bud blooms straight up. My heart stutters in my chest as it dawns on me what I’ve just done. It’s the ugly flower from the photo. The ugly tropical flower that wouldn’t be found anywhere outside a jungle.
“Um…” I look up to find Oleander staring at the flower with a dumbfounded look on his face, but as soon as he looks to me his expression changes. It’s a smooth transition, going from bewildered to nonchalant relatively quickly.
“Wasn’t expecting that.” He smiles carefully, and then looks back to the flower. “A Monkey’s Cup, if I’m not mistaken, though they’re usually prone to the tropics.”
“Yeah,” I reply, swallowing hard. “I don’t really know how I did that.”
“It’s all right,” Oleander assures, shaking his head. “You just have a lot more power than we thought. Some of the elders can pull different plants from all over the world. It takes them longer of course, since the seed has to travel through the earth to get to them, but it’s been done.”
“Oh,” I mumble, blinking down at the flower. “So... I just moved it from a rainforest somewhere?”
“Apparently.” He shrugs. “There isn’t really another option. It’s not as if you just formed it yourself. Only the Divine Spirit can create.”
“Right.” I look up to find him looking entirely too casual. It’s unnerving. Oleander stands and my mind starts imagining the excuses he’s about to use to get away from me.
“Care to go for a walk?” he asks instead. “We could practice a bit more; maybe even get you to cast into another stone or two. It’d probably be a good idea for us to figure out what your basic stones do.”
My surprise at Oleander’s largely unbothered reaction to my superior power takes me a moment to get through, but even when I do, I still feel my anxiety rising.
Neither Tirigan nor I have tried invoking the stone I casted for Kor last week. It’s not that I’m avoiding it, it’s just that we’ve been busy with everything else.
“Yeah, sure,” I reply softy, still in awe of Oleander’s instant acceptance.
Oleander starts walking us toward the house, but dips around to the side instead of going inside, leading us toward the front.
“I think Kor still has the stone I cast into,” I tell him.
“That’s all right. It was a Quartz, right? I’ve got a few of those. When we get back, you can try again.”
“All right,” I agree, nodding. Just as we turn the corner of the house, I hear the front door thrust open and a distressed yell from Bo.
“You tosser!” Bo shrieks, running full speed out of the house and jumping down the steps from the porch. “A bloody mongrel, you are!” She flips her head upside down and begins shaking her hair out, running her hands through it roughly.
Chasing after her, Robin laughs maniacally, clutching his stomach and gasping for air. “I got you! I got you!”
“What’s all this, then?” Oleander asks with a bright smile, on the verge of laughter himself.
“This rat cast ants in me hair!” Bo yells from her position. Little specks fall from her hair and onto the ground as she works them out. I hold back my laughter for Bo’s sake, but Oleander doesn’t show the same restraint. “A little help would be nice, you giant oaf!”
Oleander flicks his wrist casually towards Bo as he doubles over in laughter. A line of black dots forms, floating away from Bo’s head and down to the ground.
Bo stops shaking her hair out after a mome
nt and stands up straight again, just as the last of the ants float off into the air and land back in the dirt. She shudders dramatically.
“That was absolutely revolting,” she groans and then turns quickly to her little brother, who’s still in hysterics on the porch steps. “You betta watch your back, you little scat!” Robin stops his laughing fit immediately and his eyes widen. “I think those trains of yours might find themselves in me next bonfire!”
Robin gasps and clamps his hand over his mouth.
“You wouldn’t!” He turns and runs back into the house, presumably to hide his favorite toys.
“Would so!” Bo calls back at him, hands on her hips and shaking her head as she turns back to us. “You didn’t have to encourage him, Ollie.”
“I did no such thing,” Oleander defends, failing in his attempt to hide his smile. “I find this whole ordeal absolutely reprehensible.”
Bo gives him a look that says she isn’t amused, but then turns to me with an exasperated smile. “You’re lucky you didn’t grow up around this nonsense. I swear, these kids are not going to make it into double digits.”
“I don’t know, it looks pretty fun…” Bo’s eyes widen in comedic opposition, forcing me to rephrase my statement. “I mean, as a kid. You know? It’s probably a lot of fun as a kid to cast and annoy your older siblings. Not fun for you, of course.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I’m not entirely innocent either,” Bo replies, fixing her hair as best she can without a mirror. “I’m sure Ave could spin a tale or two.”
“Is he awake yet?” Oleander asks, closing the distance between him and Bo. His fingers carefully arrange the young Fotián’s tresses back to normal. “Charlie and I fancied a walk, get out and let her practice a bit. Thought maybe Avias and Tirigan might want to join us.”
Bo’s cheeks flush red as she looks up at Oleander, who’s still fixing her hair. Remembering Tirigan’s annoyance with me when I read his body temperature, I don’t attempt it with Bo.