Edie in Between

by Laura Sibson

  “Edie!”

  I run out of the boat and up the dock. I don’t stop when Jim calls after me. It’s the middle of the day and he’s surrounded by people eager to rent equipment. I clutch my sparking fingers into fists. I pump my legs and they burn with effort as I continue to run.

  Before I know it, I’m at the entrance to the perpetual woods, the magical clearing. I whisper the words. Nothing happens. I sigh and collapse on soft pine needles carpeting the forest floor at the base of the hawthorn. I press the back of my head against the old tree and clutch the acorn charm.

  “Please help me,” I say. “I know I told you to go away. But I thought this was all your fault. I was wrong. I need you.”

  The charm warms in my fingers and at the same time, I sense a rippling all around me, like a soft breeze. A warm glow caresses me. The magical clearing has opened up. The flowering trees continue to flower and the bees are busy at their work. The hawthorn moves through her seasons one after the next.

  How could it have been my grandmother who had invoked such awful magic? My mother had been young. She’d been missing her father and then she’d been heartbroken by Jim. I could almost forgive her. But my grandmother was a grown woman, a mother, skilled in magic, and she knew exactly what she was doing.

  Anger spikes followed by the tingling. My fingers spark again and once more I close my hands into fists and hold them against my chest. GG had let me believe that it had been Mom to blame. And she’d had me working to right this terrible wrong on my own. Me. Not even a legal adult and most definitely not skilled in magic.

  I unfold my hands again and look at my fingers. I focus on control and allow sparks to jump from my fingertips. My stomach clenches.

  “Hello, Fear,” I whisper. I focus, like I did when we performed the ritual, but this time, I don’t stop when the sparks dance. I imagine the sparks merging. A crackling ball of fire appears over each hand. Just like when GG was coaching me that day on the back of the boat. Not much larger than a grape. I blink rapidly, surprised. I give the ball in my left hand a slight bump with my palm, and it leaps to the other hand, joining that one. I let out a quavering breath.

  Now I have a ball of fire the size of an orange floating above my cupped palms. I hold it there, hanging in the air. I override the instinct to clench my hands closed. Instead, I remain still, sensing the power that flows out of me and into this fire. I spread my arms out and the ball grows wider. I huff out a nervous breath. I press my hands toward one another, and the ball becomes elongated.

  When the urge to stop becomes a dim hum in the background, I look around for a safe place to send my fire. My eyes land on the large slab of stone that GG uses to cut herbs. I stand, guiding the orb of fire toward the stone. When I’m near enough, I slam the fire ball into it.

  The ball explodes, dissolving into tiny sparks once again. They migrate to my fingers like magnetic filings. I breathe deeply in and out. When I look at my hands, they’re no longer sparking. I touch my fingers to the acorn charm.

  My grandmother has betrayed me, but I still need her. Whatever we did, it didn’t work. The lines on my arm are just as bad as they had been. I have to go back, and I have to ask for her help. At least now I understand why she never shared memories of the past. The spirit had stolen them from her. I turn slowly in this space, taking in all the plants and trees and their meanings. I’ve come so far from the person I was when I arrived in Cedar Branch. And I’ve learned so much. Maybe even enough to help my grandmother.

  I walk GG’s maze and harvest some herbs and leaves from nearby trees. I bundle them together with a thin green branch. I hold up my hands, sense the familiar nervousness alongside the power flowing in me, and then I light the bundle on fire. After I blow out the flames, I breathe in the smoke, feeling the curative properties of GG’s plants work in my system, giving me the energy that I need to face this next step.

  * * *

  * * *

  When I return to the marina, it’s early evening and all the day rentals have returned. I find GG sitting in her chair in the living quarters. I walk over to the Brigid candle and light it with a touch of my fingers.

  “All those weeks ago, you told me to learn the magic and then we’d talk about me going home. Did you know then that I’d be in danger trying to fix this terrible magic that you’d allowed into our lives?” I pause. “Did you ever have any intention of allowing me to go home?”

  “My intention—now and always—has been to keep you safe,” GG says.

  “Well, you’ve been pretty shit at it.”

  “I can’t argue with you.”

  “I’m really angry with you, but I still need your help. And I have an idea.”

  Sitting before GG, I place into a bowl herbs I harvested as well as soil from the perpetual woods. I select two crystals from GG’s collection. I hold my palms up.

  “Place your hands in mine and call your element,” I say to my grandmother. She quirks an eyebrow but doesn’t object. Resting her palms on mine, she closes her eyes and the soil swirls upward like smoke from an extinguished candle. She opens her eyes to watch me. I call my fire and the two dance together, flames twining around the spinning soil. Then I speak the spell I created:

  “For memories stolen by means impure,

  May our Mitchell magic be the cure.

  With power of fire and strength of earth,

  We call the memories, we know their worth.”

  As the words flow out of me, a glow emanates from us. GG’s eyes widen. Her mouth trembles. My fire extinguishes and her soil drops back into the bowl. GG clutches me to her. “I remember,” she whispers into my hair. “I remember everything now.” She pulls back from me. “And I know where they are!”

  Before I can ask what she’s talking about, the wind chimes on our deck start to send off a cacophony of sound. GG looks in the direction of the sound with a worried expression. Something dark and fluid dances at the edge of my vision. GG and I both turn toward my bedroom door to look at the same time. There’s nothing there.

  “Did you see—?” I start to ask.

  “The iron talisman. The triquetra. Did you put it back over your window?” GG asks, standing so suddenly that her chair topples backward.

  My eyes go wide. I’d forgotten. I shake my head. GG and I rush toward my room. Tendrils of shadow curl from beneath my door. I step back.

  “Can you tell me now?” I ask. “What magic still needs to be undone?”

  GG pauses and turns toward me. “Still?”

  “We performed a bind-breaking ritual. From Mom’s journal. Because you said you couldn’t help.”

  “You released the bind?” GG looks very pale all of a sudden.

  My bedroom door flies open. The room is black with shadows. They rush toward us. I stumble backward.

  “Yes, I freed Grandfather and I revealed the workshop.”

  GG raises her arms and vines start to grow across my door. The shadows seep through the barrier she’s creating.

  “The bind you broke, what you’ve freed—that was not your grandfather!” GG continues building vines. “You need to get out of here.”

  “I want to help you!”

  “Go! You’ll be helping me by keeping yourself safe. And Edie—here!”

  She throws something to me, and I catch it. It’s small silver sphere like a tea ball.

  “What do I do with this?” I call back to GG.

  “Keep that safe. Only the power of three will work! I’ll be there. I promise!” GG can barely get the words out. Feathers protrude from her mouth. The shadows twist around her legs. She goes down on one knee. Inky feathers swirl around the room like a cyclone. GG is barely visible now. She’s raising her hands to fight back. The shadows begin to slink toward me.

  I pocket the silver ball and fling open the door leading out of our living quarters, bracing myself for shadows. B
ut there is nothing. Even the wind chimes have stopped their noise. I look over my shoulder to see how GG is managing to fight the shadows.

  But my grandmother is gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  EDIE

  Sprinting at full speed, I’m well away from the marina before I realize that I don’t have my phone or my bag. I left with nothing except the clothes on my body, the protection bag, and GG’s silver ball. I almost stop at Jim’s, but I can’t imagine that he could help. I should have stayed to help GG. I know how to make fire now—I could have saved her. But now she’s gone. I run to Tess’s house where I pound on the door.

  “Hi. Mrs. Sullivan.” I pant between each word. “Is. Tess. Here?” I continue to pant.

  “Hi, Edie. Come on in. Tess wasn’t kidding when she said you love to run. Even at dinnertime, huh?” She laughs like running is a silly idea. “Tess?” she calls. “Edie is here.”

  I hear Tess yell that she’s coming.

  “She’ll be right here, hon.” Tess’s mom smiles and disappears into the house. A second later, Tess opens the door and steps onto the porch. I already feel a tiny bit better, seeing my friend.

  “You look like shit. What’s going on?” Tess asks.

  I stand up and wince. I have a stitch in my side. “GG disappeared. I think the Luctus spirit took her.”

  “What!? Should I text Rhia?”

  I nod. “Forgot my phone.”

  Tess’s thumbs fly across the face of her phone. “Meet at Cosmic Flow?”

  I clutch my head in my hands. “I guess?”

  “Where else?”

  “Cabin?”

  “Cosmic Flow first.”

  Tess sticks her head back in the house to tell her mom that we are going out. Then I’m in her Jeep. Everything blurs by me.

  Rhia is already at the shop when we arrive. I tell both of them what happened on the boat and that my grandmother is to blame. It was never my mother. Then I tell them what GG said before she disappeared.

  “She said she remembered everything, that she knew where they were, whatever that means. And we need the power of three.”

  “Miss Geraldine—cryptic to the end,” Rhia muses. “What could she mean? What are we supposed to do?”

  “We know that the acorn has Edie’s mom’s blood in it,” Tess says. “And Edie’s element is fire.”

  “And we’ve spent the summer learning spells from her mother’s journal,” Rhia says.

  “So Mom’s blood plus my fire plus some unidentified spell and what? We either fix this or burn down the world?”

  “We need to figure out which spell,” Tess says.

  “And what did Miss Geraldine mean when she said the power of three? Does she mean us three?”

  I walk in circles, tugging my hair back from my face. “I don’t know, and we don’t have time to figure it out.” I stop my pacing when I remember what GG tossed at me on my way out. “Wait, she also gave me this.” I pull the silver ball from my pocket.

  Rhia almost smiles. “Oh! I read about these.”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “A spell ball.” Rhia clicks the clasp and opens the ball, showing us the contents. “This must be what we need.” She pulls something from the ball and holds it up.

  “Ew!” Tess says, stepping back.

  “That’s GG’s hair!” I say.

  “Perfect. Let’s find out where she is,” Rhia says.

  We use a strand of hair from the spell ball, crystals from the shop, and the chain from my acorn necklace to cast the finding spell from Mom’s journal.

  All those weeks ago, I saw this spell as the only useful one in the book. I hadn’t realized then that most of Mom’s spells had bigger uses. I hadn’t imagined that a silly acne hiding spell could end up revealing a hidden map. I hadn’t expected the keep dry charm to give me protection from drowning. And I definitely hadn’t expected to use this one to find my grandmother who has been taken by shadows. My hands shake as I hold the chain above the map. My voice shakes, too. I can’t say the words.

  “Will you all say it with me?” I ask.

  They both nod and we begin, our three voices joining together for this one purpose. “With this crystal and the items I bind, reveal to me the one I wish to find.”

  The crystal swings for a moment before it stops dead and pulls itself down to a spot on the map.

  * * *

  * * *

  We’re quiet as we drive. No music, no chatter. Apparently, my grandmother is at the beech, but I don’t know why or what I’m supposed to do when we arrive. Tess makes the bone-jarring drive across the field as the sun crashes into the horizon, leaving a blaze of color in its wake.

  “There she is!”

  GG is bent over at the base of the burn-scarred tree. I jump out of the Jeep and run to her. She’s holding her athame above the dirt where a large root forks into two.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Seeking.”

  “Seeking what, GG?” I kneel beside her. “What are you looking for?”

  “The ashes. I buried them here.”

  “What ashes?”

  GG turns a determined face to me. “My dead husband’s ashes.”

  The same green fire that took the beech tree sparks then, along the exposed roots just next to my grandmother. She doesn’t even jump. “I must be very close.” She drops the athame and holds her palms out to direct the earth. The flames grow bigger, their crackling loud.

  “What can I do?” I call to her.

  “Keep it at bay,” she yells back.

  The fire spikes waist-high flames, fed by our own power and this liminal space. Last time, I tried to pull it from the beech and I nearly died. This time I know better. I’ll fight fire with fire. I flick my hands and the sparks answer immediately. I imagine flames and they come. Holding my palms outward, I press my fire against the green flames. My arms ache from the effort. GG moves her hands as though weaving. The earth obeys, rising from the hole and landing in a pile. Tess has brought a shovel from her Jeep but tosses it aside when she sees GG in action.

  I continue to press back the cold, green flame of the Luctus spirit. I lean into the fire as if I’m pushing against a heavy wind. The fires crackle and spit at one another, sparks flying. The green fire continues to rage, but my fire banks it, preventing it from reaching my grandmother.

  “I’ve got them!” GG shouts.

  “What do I do now?”

  GG hands the dirt-covered box to Rhia. “On my count, step away.”

  I nod my understanding.

  “One,” GG yells as she sweeps her arms up. The earth follows her movements, rising from the ground. “Two.” She swirls her arms and the dirt sweeps itself into a wall. “Three!”

  I leap away and GG throws her arms forward. The wall of earth smothers the green flames as well as my orange ones.

  My chest heaves with effort. GG braces her hands on her knees, breathing heavy. “I’m getting too old for this,” she says. But then she stands up, brushes herself off, and then says to all three of us, as though we’re planning a simple outing to the store. “Ready, girls?”

  * * *

  * * *

  As we bump our way across the field and then up to Shaw Road, GG explains that when we performed the bind-breaking ritual in the cabin, we released the final bind on the Luctus spirit. When I did my spell, it brought GG’s memories back. But it also called the spirit to our boat. She shares all that rushed back to her. The ashes were the final element needed. Along with Mom’s blood and hair from me and GG, we could call on the power of our line and finally dispel this spirit.

  The old oak tree comes into sight. Tess stops the Jeep at the rock cairn. The evening sky darkens with an oncoming storm; the trees sway as a fierce wind picks up. GG and I get out of the Jeep.

 
“I’ll go ahead to give you time to perform the ritual to forge the acorn into a vessel for our magic. Remember that you will need your mother’s blood, your fire, and my husband’s ashes,” GG says. “Where are they?”

  “Rhia has them.” I raise my voice to be heard over the unnatural wind rushing around us. My grandmother’s hair ripples around her head. She looks every inch the witch that she is.

  “After the ritual, when you come into the workshop, create a circle of protection right away.” She gestures around herself to show me what she means.

  “With salt?” I ask. “Like Rhia does?”

  “With fire. Like only you can do.”

  “I’ve never done that before.”

  GG steps closer to me. “You just held back a magical blaze with your fire and you’d never done that before, right?” I nod. “Good. Now, whatever you do, keep the acorn close. If the Luctus spirit gets ahold of the acorn, the spirit will have a way into our ancestral line. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.” My stomach is in knots imagining what the spirit could do with access to the Mitchell line, what sort of havoc and misery it could create. And I’m supposed to be the witch to stop it.

  “When you’ve completed your circle of fire, start the incantation.”

  I nod, but GG must see how terrified I am. She grabs me in a tight hug. “You can do this! You’re a Mitchell.” She lets me go. “And you will not be alone. Not for long anyway.”

  GG whispers a few words, flicks her hand and the chain across the drive falls to the ground. She disappears down the driveway. I poke my head back into the Jeep.

  “I love you guys,” Tess says, practically in tears.

  “We love you, too!” Rhia says. “It’ll be okay.”

  “You’re just saying that,” Tess says. “But I like it. Could you keep saying it?”

  “It’ll be okay,” Rhia repeats calmly.

  I speak up. “Look, I couldn’t have done any of this without both of you. I just need to—”

  “Nope.” Tess holds up her hand. “No dramatic monologues in case we all die. Listen to Rhia. It’s going to be fine. You and I will be slinging ice cream cones in three days tops. And Rhia will be back to selling candles to wannabe witches. You’ll go back to Baltimore and Rhia and I will come visit you.”