by Laura Sibson
“Help me, please,” I whisper.
I raise my hands. Fire is my element, so fire should obey me. Even if it’s not a natural fire. I hope I’m right. I need to be right. The green flames lick at the branches, consuming the leaves. I focus on the fire, on each molecule, and call it to leave the tree. Sparks jump and skitter toward me. I feel them hit my fingertips and enter my being. They are cold, not like my fire. It’s working. I must stay focused.
My feet leave the earth, but I hardly notice. More sparks follow the first ones. The fire seems to dim, but barely. My body continues to rise. I float in the air, toward the fire and the fire flows toward me.
My arms are outstretched, doing all that I can to bring the fire to me, within me. I feel it entering my body, filling me with its cold fury. My vision grows blurry. Shadows swirl at the edges of my sight. The cold burn licks at my face and the surge of fire from the tree pushes me ever higher. My arms can’t hold much longer. I try to hang on, to keep pulling fire, calling it to me, but the great tree still burns. I call with everything in me. Then I begin to fall.
* * *
* * *
“Edie.”
I hear my name. The voice pounds the inside of my skull.
“Edie, Edie.”
The pounding is like someone knocking on my head to be allowed in.
“Edie, wake up now!”
Someone snaps their fingers and my eyes fly open. Rhia, Tess, and GG stand over me. The stars swim behind their heads.
“Did you wake her?” Rhia asks GG.
“I did. But it won’t last long.” GG kneels beside me and holds my head up. “Open up, Edie.” She slips a large spoonful of honey into my mouth.
“Mmm,” I say. It’s sweet, but also peppery. “Yummy!” Then I say to Rhia and Tess, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” I giggle.
“Is she drunk?” Rhia asks.
“It’s a side effect of what she’s done.” GG’s tone is grim. “She’s going to feel awful tomorrow. If she makes it through the night. Come on, Edie. To your feet. Let’s go. That’s it.”
Somehow, I am upright. “Wow.” I look down and wiggle my toes. “Look! Those are my feet way down there. But where are my shoes?”
“Can you girls help me get her back to your car?” GG says.
Rhia and Tess each take one of my arms and they walk-drag me back to the Jeep. The scent of scorched wood fills my nose.
“What happened?” I ask. “Where are we? Oh, I don’t feel so—” I stop, push my friends away and retch into the field.
“You’ve been messing with things you aren’t prepared to deal with,” GG says to me when I wobble my way back.
“I saved our beech!” I say. “Wait.” I turn, looking for Tess. “Did I save it? The tree?”
“You tried your best. We won’t know just yet.”
“I didn’t save it? Oh, no.” I flop down on the ground, suddenly despondent. “Mom’s journal was in there.”
“What?” GG says.
“Mom’s journal.” I press the heels of my palms into my eyes.
“How long will she be like this?” Tess asks.
“Until she sleeps it off,” GG says. “Then she’ll need days to recover.”
“Can you give her something to help?” Rhia asks.
“She’ll get through it quicker if I don’t.”
The next thing I know, I’m in Tess’s Jeep.
“If you puke in here, it will not matter that you are some magical girl with a death wish because I will kill you dead, understood?” Tess says.
I nod and everything goes double.
“Don’t let her fall asleep,” GG says.
“Don’t you need a ride?”
“No, I’ll meet you at the boat.”
And then we’re off.
“Bumpy, bumpy!” I say as Tess navigates through the field and back to the dirt road that leads to the highway. “Rhia?”
“Yeah?” Rhia says.
Everything dims.
“Edie!” Tess yells.
My eyes fly open. “What?”
“Don’t fall asleep.”
“Rhia, you’re so pretty. Did anyone ever tell you how pretty you are? Because you are. So, so pretty. Man, I’d like to kiss you. I’ve been wanting to kiss you forever.”
* * *
* * *
When I wake, I can’t see. I panic before I realize that a compress lies across my eyes and forehead. I nudge it away and blink against the daylight, which feels like tiny needles stabbing into my eyes. Temperance licks a paw and looks at me as if to say it’s fine if she sleeps forever, but not okay if I do. My left arm feels sort of heavy. I raise it to my eye level. It’s wrapped in layers of leaves. That can only mean my veins have gotten worse. I need to use the bathroom very badly, but I can’t seem to move my body.
“Geege?” I try to call loudly, but my voice is weak.
She appears at my door. “Oh, thank the gods and goddesses.” She wipes her hands on a tea towel and comes into my room where she leans over to feel my forehead. Two or three ghosts float in behind her.
“Can you help me up? I can’t seem to move.”
“You don’t need to get up.”
“I do,” I say. “I need to use the bathroom.”
GG nods her understanding and comes to the side of my bed. She lifts my legs and turns my body so that my legs are on the floor. She guides me to sitting upright. A rush of light-headedness makes me dizzy.
“Can you stand on your own?” GG asks.
I shake my head. She helps me up and with slow steps, she guides me to our shared, tiny bathroom.
“Do you need help in there?” she asks. Her tone is so gentle.
“I’ll manage.”
I shut the door and fall more than sit on the toilet. When I’m done, I manage to pull myself up to standing. I peer in the mirror. The whites of my eyes have gone blood red around the hazel irises. My hair explodes around my head in a dark-brown wavy mass. When I wash my hands, I notice that my nail beds are all black. Peeling back the leaves on my left arm, I gasp. The black veins are up to my biceps now.
I emerge from the bathroom and take slow steps back to my room. It’s all I can do to reach my bed.
“Why do I feel this way? Why do I look like this?”
GG tucks my covers around me. “What you did took an enormous strain on your being. After you took in that fire, it started to burn through your body.” I can hear the concern in her voice as she places a new compress on my forehead. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
I know she’s right, but the pain I’m in right now makes me wonder if death would be preferable.
“It’s worse.” I rest my right hand on my left arm.
GG sits at the edge of my bed. She nods.
“What’s today?”
“July eighteenth.”
“I’ve been sleeping for two days?” I try to sit up, but a wave of dizziness pushes me back onto my pillows.
“Yes,” GG says. She brushes my hair from my face. “As I said, you put a great strain on your body. And Edie, we need to talk.”
I fiddle with my bedspread. “You know.”
“That you’ve been messing with things outside of your understanding? Yes. Now help me fill in the blanks. What have you and your friends been up to?”
I tell GG the whole story—how we returned to the cabin to cast the protection spell, but that we also took the paper that turned out to be a map and how we’ve been trying to collect the five items in an effort to banish the presence in the cabin.
“Do you think Rhia is right about all of this?” I ask when I finish talking.
“She’s not wrong,” GG says. “But it’s a fair bit more complicated than you all realize.” GG purses her lips. “Given what I saw at the beech, you must be
very close. And this means that you must be careful moving forward. This sort of magic is not to be trifled with. By the way”—her eyes flick to my window—“where is your triquetra?”
I frown, trying to remember what happened to it after the last visit to the cabin. “It might be in Tess’s car. I’ll ask her.”
“Return it to your window. Don’t forget.”
I nod.
She picks up my arm and examines the black veins crackling up my arm. “I’m going to prepare a fresh remedy.”
Trying to take my mind off corrupted magic and infections, I think about what I know from Mom’s journal. And what I suspect but have not confirmed: Jamie is my father. GG returns with a bowl. A towel is draped over her shoulder.
“Geege, did you know Mom’s boyfriend from the summer that Grandfather died?”
A crease appears between GG’s eyebrows. “There was a boy, yes.” Her eyes cloud over. “That summer was a blur. I don’t remember much from then.”
I wonder, not for the first time, if GG could possibly be losing her memory. We’re both quiet as GG layers the fresh salve over my arm. My thoughts take me back to Mom’s notebook.
“Her journal was at the beech,” I say quietly.
GG nods. “You said that on the night it happened.”
I rub the fingers of my left hand, which have stayed colder than any other part of my body ever since I held that rock.
“I’ve lost my one way of learning from her. I was never ready when she was around, but now I am ready to learn, and she’s gone.”
I begin to cry.
GG sets the bowl on my bedside table and wipes her hands on her apron. She sits on the edge of my bed. “You have everything that you need. Here, here, and here.” GG touches me lightly on the forehead, my heart, and Mom’s necklace, resting her hand for a moment longer on the necklace.
Chapter Twenty-Five
EDIE
Another day passes before I feel well enough to get up, but I still don’t leave the boat. I’m getting some strength back, thanks to GG’s remedies and her honey. Even so, I spend most of my time in bed. I feel like Mom did when she wrote about staying in bed all day missing her father.
Not having the journal feels like an added physical pain. I can’t believe I left it at the beech. I’d thought that the objects we’d collected were helping me deal with Mom’s death by letting me be in memories. But they were also making me sick. I know GG says that I have everything in my head and my heart, but I wish I had the journal in my hands right now.
When Tess shows up the following day, I’m on the roof among GG’s plants. She climbs up the ladder and stands awkwardly for a minute before she finds a place to sit. Temperance slides by her and then disappears among the plants with a flick of her tail.
“Hey!” I say, surprised.
“You said you’d never bail on me, so when you didn’t show this morning, I figured you were still sick. Either that, or you’re never speaking to me again.”
“I’ve been really out of it. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She shrugs. “I actually ran on my own, if you can believe that.”
“That’s awesome.” I run my hand down the length of my ponytail. “Um, so, you two might have been right,” I say. “About those items being bad for me.”
Tess nods. “I know we were right. But I’m sorry we lied.” She fidgets with her shoelaces for a moment. “The news trucks have been at the beech.”
Grateful for the change of topic, I ask, “What’re they saying?”
“That it was some sort of natural gas explosion. That’s not what you think, is it?”
I shake my head. “GG figured out what we’ve been up to—searching for the five items. She said that the fire at the beech means that we’re getting close. I wish that made me feel better, but it doesn’t.” I pluck a bit of rosemary from a nearby plant and break it with my fingernail, releasing the woodsy scent. “Does Rhia still believe that I did it?” It’s almost painful to say the words out loud.
Tess looks down. “I’m not sure.”
I flick the pieces of rosemary away and sigh.
“What do you remember from that night?” Tess asks, cocking her head.
I blink a couple times and frown. “Not much. I remember trying to pull the fire away from the tree. And maybe I was floating or something?”
Tess nods. “Yeah, you were levitating. It was wild. You did do it, though, Edie. You were pulling the fire into your body. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“If the tree has died, I failed.” I’m quiet for a moment.
“It was scary to see you like that,” she admits.
Now I look up. “Like what?”
“Floating and having that green fire flow into you. It’s like you weren’t you. Like you weren’t—” Tess shakes her head. “What else do you remember?”
“It’s all a blur. Until I woke up in my bed two days later.”
Tess bites her lip like she doesn’t want to tell me something.
“What?”
“You’re going to be embarrassed.”
“Just tell me!”
“Well, you sort of told Rhia how pretty she was.” Tess winces. “And that you wanted to kiss her.”
My cheeks burn with the hot rush of embarrassment. I look down.
“I was starting to get a vibe about you two,” Tess says. “I mean, I totally saw you in the boat back on Fourth of July. But since you haven’t really let on what you’re feeling, I thought you should know what you said.”
I don’t say anything. I’m not sure I can still feel that way after what Rhia accused me of. I rub my fingers on a lamb’s ear leaf, getting small comfort from its softness. I have trouble meeting Tess’s eyes.
“Talk to her,” Tess says.
I chew the inside of my mouth.
Tess stands up. “I need to get ready for work.”
* * *
* * *
After Tess leaves, I go back to bed. I’m pretty sure Tess was trying to say that I didn’t seem human. And Rhia has accused me of using my element to destroy a tree. So there go my only friends in town. Now that I’ve had a taste of what it means to feel connected to people, to let them in, I feel lonelier than I’ve been since Mom died.
The scent of honeysuckle drifts into my room and Mom appears. I haven’t seen her for a while. Looking at her floating before me like that, I wonder why she had hoped to see her Dad again. Needing my mother and not feeling her touch or being able to actually speak to her—this is so much worse than not seeing her at all.
“Go away,” I say, squeezing my eyes closed. “If you can’t talk to me or help me, I don’t want to see you anymore.”
* * *
* * *
On Wednesday, I finally get up and get dressed. I pull on the shorts I’d worn the night of the beech fire and feel something in the pocket—the map. I’d thought that I’d left it in Mom’s journal so I’m relieved to have something rather than nothing. The map tells me that I need to go the cemetery and I’m sure that I’m looking for my grandfather’s dog tags.
I close my eyes to bring up the spell for finding lost things, but all that appears behind my closed eyes is Rhia, looking hurt and betrayed. I hold my head in my hands.
When I come out of my room dressed, GG looks pleased. “You seem stronger.”
“Yes, thanks to you.”
“Going somewhere?”
“I need to take a walk.”
“Remember that your body is still recovering. Don’t expect more than it can give.”
As soon as I walk off the boat, I soak in the July heat. Jim is spray washing the hull of a huge fishing boat. He stops the sprayer. “Edie! Good to see you up and out.”
“You heard?”
“Yes, your grandmother told me. Sounds like a hell o
f a stomach bug.”
Seriously, GG? “Yep, went right through me. Later!” I wave as Jim shakes his head and chuckles.
The cemetery sits at the top of a small hill, up and away from the river. By the time I enter through the huge wrought iron gates, I’m drenched in sweat, but I don’t mind. The heat makes me feel more alive than I have in days.
I follow the winding paths aimlessly for a while until I admit to myself that there’s no way that I’m going to find dog tags in a cemetery just by wandering. I’m so tired. I sit down on a stone bench planted at the foot of someone’s gravestone. A cedar rises up beside the bench.
I’ve never spent much time in cemeteries. We don’t bury the women in our family. We cremate them and on the one-year anniversary of their death, we plant a tree in their honor and sprinkle the ashes in the soil. Mom had thought it was a lovely tradition to show our connection to the earth and its elements. But when it happened to us, when Mom died, I had wished for a traditional ceremony—some songs sung, some words said—that would help me make sense of it. Mom’s death anniversary is just weeks away. I can only hope that I’ll be healed by then. That this will all be over.
I close my eyes to and try to hold the image of dog tags in my mind. I start to say the words of the finding spell, but they get tangled on my tongue. Mom and the lost journal fill my thoughts. Nothing is revealed to me, which isn’t a surprise because I can’t clear my mind long enough to focus. I stand for a moment with the sun on my face.
I miss my mother’s humor. I miss her delight in life. I miss her smell. I miss her so much. I think that maybe she’ll appear to me now, but she doesn’t. Maybe she listened when I told her to go away. Now I regret my words.
* * *
* * *
GG climbs down from the roof of the boat when I return. “Are you okay?”
“I’m so tired. No energy.”
She wipes her hands on her smock and starts the kettle. “I told you that you need to be patient with your body while it heals.”