Lea brightened at the prospect. “Cool, but you’d all better come around six.”
“Huh? It will be dark by then.”
“My aunt only works in her garden by moonlight,” said Lea. “The daylight triggers her migraines. And Saturday is only a short while after the full moon, so there should still be lots of light.”
Speaking of headaches, I was starting to get one, so I put my mug down after drinking only half the coffee.
“About bringing your sister … I really like her, it’s just that I’m not sure … she seems very …” Lea paused and tilted her head as if she was listening to something. Then I could hear it too, a soft eerie melody coming from the backyard.
We both got up and went to the back door. I opened it up a crack and we peered out to the patio where Sookie kept her potted plants. The moon glowed softly from the night sky. Moon rays traveled down and pooled like spotlights on the plants and my sister. She was chanting to a plant and cradling it in her hands. I swear the plants had grown about a foot since the other night. Dread seeped right through me. This whole plant thing wasn’t normal. My head ached and I rubbed my forehead. How did this all fit? My odd chills, these plants …
Lea pulled me back inside the kitchen and closed the door.
“Your sister is … unusual,” Lea said in a flat voice
that gave me even more shivers of dread. It was almost as if she sensed Sookie’s … strange abilities.
Then as if Lea still read my mind, she said, “Look, that’s licorice root she’s growing – make sure she doesn’t put any in your cereal because it will put you under her power.” Lea flashed a half-smile as if to see how I’d react.
I hoped she was joking, but I couldn’t exactly say, “Yeah, my sister can get pretty carried away with her magic.”
“And the plant she’s holding is mullein. It’s said when you burn that as incense it can raise the dead.”
But then she let out a shaky laugh and though my head began pounding, I managed a giggle too.
Lea’s voice drifted as she watched Sookie tenderly dig to loosen the soil in another one of her potted plants. “And that’s Spanish moss.”
That plant looked creepy in the moonlight – like a mass of grey worms.
“I wonder why my aunt gave your sister those plants …” Lea looked over her shoulder as if she was expecting someone. “Maybe I’d better go home and see what Aunt Bea is doing,” she said nervously.
Lea seemed to be acting a bit strange. I rubbed my aching head and thought that lately that’s how everything felt to me. After I walked Lea to the door, I heard Sookie’s accusing voice behind me. “You’re not allowed to have coffee.”
Great. I’d forgotten to wash up the mugs in the kitchen. I glanced nervously at my watch wondering how much time was left before Mom got home. But that wouldn’t stop Sookie from telling on me … unless …
“And you’re not supposed to be practicing magic without Alice and Lucinda’s supervision.”
“What? What do you mean?” Sookie’s voice squeaked in surprise, but she looked positively guilty.
So Sookie knew she was using magic! “I mean,” I said sternly, “Your plants are growing like crazy, and I’m guessing you’re using more than water and sunlight to accomplish that.”
Tears welled in Sookie’s eyes, and a single tear spilled down her cheek. “I’m being good, really. No one is whispering to me to make the plants grow – no one is putting ideas into my head. I – I just know that I can do it. I like growing things.”
“No magic,” I insisted. “Not one drop more until I talk to the Greystones.”
I didn’t like the stubborn look Sookie got, but she went to bed without another word.
That night a shrill wail cut through to my bones, and it definitely wasn’t the wind. I tossed and turned and couldn’t sleep, but the coffee wasn’t to blame. Between the weird shriek, Sookie’s plants, and a jittery feeling I couldn’t shake, a dark worry had grabbed hold of my heart and wouldn’t let go. Despite my desperate wish for my life to be normal in this town so I could focus on the dance and a cool dress …
Something just wasn’t right.
CHAPTER 7 - A Mysterious Discovery
AFTER SCHOOL THE next day, I waited for Jasper by my locker so we could go together to see our friends Alice and Lucinda. They were the magic experts in town, and they’d be able to give me some advice. I fidgeted while Mia and Amarjeet kept rehashing the dance lessons in every detail. The problem was none of us liked the lessons. They weren’t helping us build team spirit. Instead, most of the guys resented the whole dancing idea as getting in the way of soccer, and most of the girls saw the lessons as getting in the way of the guys wanting to go to the Valentine’s dance. I guess that united us somewhat
– but probably not in the way Ms. Dreeble and Mr. Morrows hoped.
As for my teachers, I was more than a little puzzled by the way Ms. Dreeble and Mr. Morrows danced away each lesson, hardly noticing us at all. Also, Mr. Morrows looked so different after shaving off his mustache. What was up with that?
“The boys are in bad moods the whole time during our dance class. So how are you supposed to let a boy know you like him anyway?” complained Amarjeet. She banged her locker shut in frustration. At the beginning of the year, she’d liked Jasper, but lately all she talked about was Rabinder. Then Amarjeet turned to me and said, “It’s not like I’m invited to the popular kids’ table like some people so I could chat with Rabinder at lunch.”
“But …” I stammered. “I was just brainstorming about the decorations with everyone at that table.”
Amarjeet rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. I overheard all the girls talk about the great dresses they were going to wear. Not everyone can get their parents to spend a fortune on clothes, you know? I was surprised to hear you going along with it all.”
My face burned. What was wrong with wanting something fancier than an outfit that would make me look like a Christmas ornament?
“Who cares?” Mia sighed. “I don’t think Mitch would notice me if I wore a gorgeous dress or a potato sack. He probably wouldn’t notice me if I grabbed him by the shoulders and shouted it in his face. He’s so busy complaining about every dance step when he’s my partner.” Mia frowned in disgust.
“If you like someone and want them to go to the dance with you, just ask them!” I exploded with impatience. If only I could worry about small things instead of a creepiness I couldn’t shake, and how it might be tied to a sister whose magic had the tendency to spin out of control. Jasper joined us, and for some reason, gave me a dark look.
“Think about it, Cat,” said Mia. “What fun would it be getting turned down by someone who doesn’t know you exist.”
I guess I hadn’t looked at it that way. Maybe because I knew there was no hope that the boy I might be interested in would ask me to any dance. Zach would definitely take Emily if he showed up at all. “Well … we could all just go together and be dazzling and let other boys sweep us off our feet,” I joked.
Mia grabbed her backpack and turned to Amarjeet. “Guess it all works out fine when you can afford clothes so expensive they’re just like on T.V.” Then Mia gently shook her head at me saying softly, “Maybe you’ve forgotten that for the rest of us, life’s a little more complicated.” Then she and Amarjeet left me standing with Jasper.
It’s not like I was pretending I had loads of designer clothes, or that I wanted the dress because it was expensive. I was going to have to work hard to get it. “Let’s go,” I said to Jasper. I wished my friends were happier about the dance. My vision of having loads of fun with everyone was starting to evaporate. If only I could think of a way to get everyone on board.
As Jasper and I walked to the Greystones’ house, I filled him in on Sookie’s gardening abilities, which raised his eyebrows.
We climbed up the wrap-around porch of the Greystones’ old-fashioned house, and once more I banged on the lion-head brass knocker – at least this doorknocke
r didn’t send chills up my arm.
Alice opened the door and invited us in with a smile. “Are you here looking for odd jobs, Cat? Lucinda and I saw your poster on the Emporium window and we’ve been making a list. We were going to call you this week. If you want, you could start right now. We were hoping you’d help us clear boxes from the garage.”
If only that was why I was here. A regular life – that’s all I wanted. “Actually I’m a little worried about Sookie.
She’s got a new hobby – gardening.”
“Why would that worry you, Cat? Gardening’s my favorite hobby,” said Lucinda who came in from the kitchen. She was in a green gardening smock and held a pair of clippers. “I’m no use at cooking,” she winced. “But I love spending time in my garden.”
“But do your potted plants grow a foot in two days? In February?” I asked. A look of alarm crossed Alice’s face, but Lucinda grew thoughtful.
“Fairy is nature at its wildest and most potent,” mused Lucinda. “Sookie has visited Fairy twice now, and magic is in her blood. Maybe this would be a safe way for her to practice.”
“But I don’t want my sister doing magic at all,” I said as worry swept over me yet again. I stared at the pattern of the Oriental rug for a second, embarrassed as I said, “I just want a normal sister.”
Jasper snickered. “Well, that will never be Sookie. She wasn’t exactly normal before we had trouble with Grim Hill fairies.”
“Also,” said Lucinda, “asking your sister to keep her magic bottled up inside her is like asking her not to speak. And you know how she loves her words. This might work out, Cat. Letting her practice with her plants might be a good way to channel some of her – well – peculiar energies.”
Once Alice and Lucinda had managed to calm my fears about Sookie, we spent the better part of the evening lugging boxes out of the garage. I was carrying an old-fashioned cookie tin when I tripped over an ancient bicycle that Jasper had dragged out. The tin fell from my arms, spilling faded cards of paper lace and delicate ribbon.
“Woops, I’m really sorry.” I began gathering up the cards.
“It’s all right, dear.” Lucinda stooped and picked up a beautiful heart-shaped card. “You’ve kept my valentines all these years,” she said to her sister in surprise.
Alice Greystone smiled sadly. “I never actually looked inside the tin. I don’t know what compelled me to hang onto it all those years during our dark times.” That’s how Alice referred to the seventy years she’d lived without her sister, who had been stolen by the fairies and was not released until she was a very old lady.
“What were years to you only seems like months to me,” Lucinda said as her sad expression deepened the wrinkles in her face. Then she smiled and said, “For example, these cards only feel months old to me.” Lucinda and Alice finished gathering the cards and placed them in the tin that I was holding.
“Oh,” gasped Alice. “Even I remember this card.” She held up a large valentine – the most spectacular card of all – a crimson foil heart that was still shiny after all these years. It glowed in the faint garage light.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
“He would have chosen only the very best for Lucinda,” Alice said. She flipped over the card and written in bold block letters was: Valentine, be forever mine. Love, Gordie.
“Remember how Gordie used to torment you?” Alice asked Lucinda. “How he’d dip your braids in the inkwell on his desk, or the time he carved both your names in the biggest oak tree at the church picnic and showed everyone! You were mortified.” Alice shook her head. “He’d ride by our house every day on his bicycle hoping to catch a glimpse of you. He was madly in love with you from the second grade right on through to the seventh grade. He even wanted to take you to your first high school dance.”
“Ah, the dance!” Lucinda exclaimed. “Oh, our gymnasium looked lovely – I was on the decorating committee and we’d hung silver and crimson foil hearts everywhere, and festooned the ceiling in white and red crepe paper. We’d even hung glowing Japanese silk lanterns. It seemed … magical.”
My heart sped up. “Wow, I found decorations just like that in the art storage room at school. The foil hearts, the crepe paper, and the silk lanterns. They couldn’t possibly be the same ones, could they?”
“Maybe not if it were only hearts and streamers,” said Jasper. “But Japanese lanterns?”
More quietly Lucinda said, “If they are the same decorations from my dance, that would make them around seventy years old.”
I was trying to remember what else I’d found there too, but then Alice slumped down on her red velvet wingback chair and didn’t appear happy.
“Seventy years is a bad number in fairy dealings,” Alice said in alarm.
As if the wind had snuffed out a candle, the room got a little darker.
CHAPTER 8 - Lost Love
AROUND HALLOWEEN I’D managed to read a few pages from a grimoire – a book of instruction for fairy students. The book said that every seventy years the fairies had to take humans as a tithe to keep a hold in the human realm. “Do you think the two dances are connected to …” I gulped, “the fairies in Grim Hill?”
“No,” Lucinda said with authority. She began pacing by her fireplace, its mantel decked with pictures of the two elderly sisters making the most of the time they had together. “Grim Hill is sealed up tight. I feel it in my bones.”
I let myself relax a bit.
“But …”
The back of my neck tingled and then knotted up.
“But what?” Jasper balled his hand in a fist, and Alice sat straight in her chair.
Lucinda said, “There was something about Valentine’s … the February before I was locked away with the fairies … something about that dance …” It was Lucinda’s turn to slump down on the matching velvet couch. She rubbed her forehead. “Sorry – it’s all a bit foggy.”
Alice grew thoughtful as she turned the foil card over and back again. “Whatever happened to Gordie?” she asked softly.
A tear welled in Lucinda’s eye. Would I ever end up getting so nostalgic over a pest like Clive? I seriously doubted it. He gave me a hard time every chance he got. Jasper said we were too much alike. Mom said maybe it was Clive’s way of getting my attention. I thought we just didn’t like each other much.
For a long while Lucinda stayed quiet and then she began to tell a story – as much to herself as to us. She put the foil heart back down in the pile of cards, and as she began to speak, her voice seemed to be coming from a faraway place:
“In the second grade I was a lonely little girl with a terrible temper,” Lucinda said. “No one would be my friend. There was a boy in my class who always fidgeted in his desk and had broken crayons and messy handwriting. He was forever sent to stand in the cloakroom for speaking out of turn or telling tall tales.”
He sounded a bit like Sookie’s friend Skeeter if you asked me.
“No one would play with him at recess because he was always getting in trouble at school. The other children were wary of him and they thought he was unpredictable. But when it was May Day, all the boys had to choose partners to dance with around the Maypole. I knew no boy in my class would pick me.” Then Lucinda fell silent again.
That would feel awful, and I began to worry how that might happen to me at the dance if I kept stomping on people’s feet. Suddenly I wondered if having someone like Clive ask me to dance was better than nobody asking me at all. Then I thought probably not.
Lucinda began her story once more. “Nobody would pick me except that boy Gordie. He walked straight up to me and asked me to be his partner for the May Day dance. And even though he was a wild boy, he was handsome with brown curly hair and the biggest green eyes, and some of the girls in my class sent jealous glances my way. He was bold, but he knew enough not to leave me out. He understood what it felt like to be excluded.”
“But I saw a lot of valentines in your tin. You must have gotten more popular,”
I reasoned.
“Oh I did,” said Lucinda now seeming to grow more aware of her surroundings. “By eighth grade I was the belle of the class with many friends vying for my attention.”
“And Gordie?” I asked. “Did he get more popular too?”
“Not at all.” Lucinda’s face darkened, and she pulled a plain cardboard valentine from the table with a hastily scribbled “Happy Valentine’s” and held it up. “This card is not very special – not like the one Gordie labored so hard over. But when I received Roger’s card, how thrilled it made me feel. He was the most popular boy in my grade and his paying attention to me meant I had to be the most popular girl.”
That would be cool, I thought, remembering how eagerly I’d wanted the same thing back in the fall when I’d started school. But it would be awkward if some other person had asked you to the dance, and you had to turn them down to go with a person in your own crowd. Maybe I understood Mia and Amarjeet and their anger a little better.
“Gordie was never afraid of anything,” said Lucinda.
“He was so brazen.” And then Lucinda got that far-off sound in her voice again.
“Mother had sewn me a blue taffeta dress for the dance with bell sleeves. That was cutting-edge fashion back then. Alice was so envious I had to hide the dress in my closet or I’d come home from school and find her flouncing around in it.”
Alice laughed and her eyes glowed. I could tell the memory warmed her. Also, that’s exactly what Sookie would do.
Then Lucinda frowned and grew pale. “Bold as brass, a few days before the dance, Gordie marched up to me and right in front of everyone said, ‘Cindy, I want you to go to the dance with me’.”
“That would be … awkward,” Jasper said as he sat down beside Lucinda on the red couch. “What did you do?” He had a curious tone to his voice – as if it mattered deeply what Lucinda had done.
“I stood there feeling mortified. I wish I could say I was trying to spare Gordie’s feelings when he’d asked me to the dance – he had a genuine affection for me,” began Lucinda. “But the truth was that I was completely selfish. I knew I’d have to turn him down so that Roger would be assured I’d go to the dance with him. I walked up to Gordie right in front of Roger and in my cruelest voice said that I wouldn’t go with him if he was the last boy on Earth. I was so unkind.” Lucinda blinked back tears.
Grim Hill: The Forgotten Secret (Grim Hill Series) Page 5