by Amber Benson
“Getting something,” Eleanora said. “What’s it look like I’m doing?”
Making a mess, Lyse thought, but kept that to herself.
Once she’d cleared out the shoes, Eleanora began to run her hands along the dusty flooring, fingers gliding across the slick hardwood.
“Aha,” she said, finding what she was searching for. There was an almost imperceptible click, and then a section of the wooden floor popped up to reveal a hidden space beneath the closet. “Gotcha!”
Eleanora retrieved an oilskin-wrapped square and held it up to the light. A sheen of pale dust covered the package. Obviously, this thing had been down there for a long time.
“I’ve memorized every word that was written in here,” Eleanora said, beginning to unwrap the oilskin, and Lyse realized it was actually an old jacket. A child’s jacket. “I was around for the last third of it; the rest I can only imagine.”
“A book?” Lyse asked when Eleanora placed the thing into her hands.
“Not a book,” Eleanora said, shaking her head. She reached across Lyse and slipped open the cover. “A Dream Journal. There are four of them.”
Three more books sat on the oilskin jacket, each one as thick and well worn as the one in Lyse’s hands. They weren’t physically large, but there was something weighted about them, as if they contained all the mysteries of the universe inside their pages.
The cover of the one in Lyse’s hand was made of firm and unbendable cardboard, a pen-and-ink illustration of a snake eating itself etched onto its plain beige front. She touched the nearly translucent paper inside, tracing the fine blue lines that banded the page like muted veins, and was surprised by how soft the paper felt beneath her fingertips.
She flipped to the next page and frowned. The Dream Journal was empty.
“I don’t understand,” she started to say, but Eleanora held up a hand.
“It’s a Dream Journal, Bear,” she said, smiling. “You can only read it in your dreams.”
This was too much. Witches, flow lines, Dream Journals . . . Lyse decided that Eleanora was off her rocker. Too many pain meds had made her demented. She set the Dream Journal back with the others on the oilskin jacket and crawled to her feet.
“Well, thank you for sharing them with me,” she said, rubbing her hands together to slough off the dust. “I think they’re beautiful. Even if they’re empty.”
Eleanora did not reply. She continued to sit on the floor, surrounded by the Dream Journals.
“I’m gonna go to my room and change, and then why don’t you let me take you somewhere nice for dinner?” Lyse added, staring down at her great-aunt. “Any place in the neighborhood you’ve wanted to try? Any place that—”
“The promise.”
Lyse took a deep breath, then nodded.
“Yes.”
“It’s very, very important. And not just to me. Say that you’ll do it.”
“Well, what is it, then?” Lyse asked, unnerved by the intensity of Eleanora’s stare. It was electric.
“Promise me you’ll do it. No matter what.”
“I’m not promising to do something without knowing what it is first—”
“I’m dying,” Eleanora said, and the energy drained out of her. She looked like a tired old woman again. “This is my dying wish. That you make me this promise.”
Lyse wanted to scream. She was being manipulated, and not even subtly.
“Eleanora—”
“Just promise me—” Eleanora implored, raising her hands together in front of her as if she were praying.
“I can’t—”
“Please, Bear, please just promise.”
“I—”
“Please!”
Lyse pushed back on her heels, spinning around, so she wouldn’t have to look at Eleanora anymore.
“All right, all right! Fine, I promise,” she cried, just wanting the onslaught of begging to stop.
Aside from her own breathing, there wasn’t a sound in the room. She turned to find Eleanora sitting on the bed. This shocked Lyse because she hadn’t heard her great-aunt get up from the floor.
“How did you—” Lyse began.
“You promised,” Eleanora said, ignoring Lyse’s question. “My blood sisters and I hold you to this promise.”
A chill ran through Lyse’s body. All of a sudden, this promise was starting to sound ominous.
“Yes, I promised,” Lyse said, frowning. “You can hold me to it. Even though you totally manipulated me into it.”
Eleanora smiled, her body relaxing for the first time since she’d picked Lyse up at the airport.
“Are you gonna tell me what it is that I blindly promised?” Lyse asked when she realized Eleanora wasn’t going to be more forthcoming.
“I want you to take my place in the coven. I want you to become a blood sister.”
* * *
Humor her. She’s dying. She wants you to be a blood whatever, then do it. Who’s it gonna hurt?
No one, Lyse thought.
Once Lyse had made the promise, she’d watched a steely sense of determination overtake Eleanora. Even though Lyse was starving, her great-aunt didn’t want to go out to eat, nor did she want to stay in and make dinner. Nope, Eleanora wanted to do some kind of weird ceremony out in the woods, and she wasn’t taking no for an answer.
“Uhm, I don’t think this is such a good idea,” Lyse said, as she watched Eleanora pull a hand-knit poncho over her head.
She remembered this poncho from adolescence. With its detailing of furry brown llamas around the collar, it’d always been one of Eleanora’s favorites.
“And what do you know about it?” Eleanora asked, handing Lyse the same shawl she’d borrowed earlier in the afternoon. “I think it’s a very good idea.”
Lyse frowned.
“Jeez Louise, don’t get snippy with me.”
Eleanora headed for the back door.
“Don’t forget the wine,” she called over her shoulder as she stepped outside. She had insisted they walk, despite the cold and drizzle.
Lyse threw on the shawl, then settled the wine bottles into a cloth bag she’d found in the pantry. She could feel her stomach rumbling and wished food were on the agenda.
“Lock the door behind you!” Eleanora yelled back at her, halfway across the wraparound patio that led to the front deck.
“Already doing it,” Lyse said as she turned the pin in the doorknob, the door locking in place behind her.
The outdoor security lights popped on as Lyse jogged to catch up with her great-aunt. Eleanora walked quickly, and Lyse had a hard time matching her focused stride.
“We have to pick someone up along the way,” Eleanora said as they took the footbridge over the koi pond and made their way to the sidewalk.
“Sure, whatever,” Lyse said, already regretting her decision to give in to her great-aunt’s bizarre request.
The bag of wine was heavy, its thin canvas strap cutting into her shoulder as they walked.
“Slow down, please,” Lyse said—every time she hit a bump in the sidewalk or picked up any extra speed, the bottles clattered together, their velocity slamming them hard against her hip bone. They were going uphill, too, which only made her burden heavier.
Eleanora ignored her pleas. She’d set a pace she liked and wasn’t gonna slow down for anyone.
“We should’ve just driven,” Lyse huffed, struggling to keep the hood of the shawl from sliding down over her face. She hadn’t noticed it before, but the fabric smelled like Dreft laundry soap, and this was somehow comforting to her.
Once again, Eleanora ignored her.
“Earth to Eleanora?” Lyse said.
“Sorry,” Eleanora said. “I was just in the middle of a conversation.”
“Excuse me?” Lyse said. A conversation? What wa
s Eleanora talking about?
“I was speaking to my friend Hessika. She says hello, by the way.”
Lyse wasn’t sure how to respond. Then she realized she’d already committed to this insanity, so she might as well make the best of it.
“Hi, Hessika,” Lyse said to Eleanora’s invisible “friend.”
“Oh, she’s gone now, Bear,” Eleanora scolded, as if Lyse were the crazy one.
“Sorry. My bad.”
“I’m the clairvoyant,” Eleanora said, just tossing this piece of info out like she was talking about the weather, or something else equally mundane. “So I’m the only one who can see the Dream Walkers, anyway.”
Lyse didn’t dignify this with an answer. Instead, she let her mind drift off into the dusky arms of the evening, enjoying the porch lights burning like torches against the darkness, the scent of night-blooming jasmine filling her nose with its heady bouquet. She missed the ubiquitous hum of the cicadas, though the longer she’d lived in the South, the easier it had become to tune them out. She wondered if she would forget their songs entirely if she ever left Athens for good.
After a few minutes of silent walking, Lyse decided a change of subject was in order.
“How’d you know what flight I was on?” She was worried Eleanora would insist it was magic.
Eleanora shrugged.
“Got a call from the bank’s fraud department. Seems they were worried about a charge someone made on our joint credit account,” Eleanora said with a sly smile. “I assured them the charge wasn’t a mistake. I assumed—after the poor way you handled my news—you might have decided to come out here to check up on me.”
“Shit,” Lyse said, shaking her head—she’d totally forgotten Eleanora was the cosigner on her emergency credit card. The card she’d used to book the plane ticket because her debit account was down to its last five hundred dollars—not nearly enough to cover the last-minute nine-hundred-dollar one-way flight.
“With a little wheedling, the nice woman from the bank gave me the details of the transaction,” Eleanora added, enjoying the look of awe on Lyse’s face.
“You’re a piece of work,” Lyse said finally, shaking her head in disbelief.
Eleanora stopped walking and turned to look at Lyse.
“I didn’t know you would actually get on the plane. I hoped you would come soon, but I didn’t know.”
She smiled as she gave Lyse’s cheek a soft pat.
“I’m glad you’re here—more so than I can say. Now, let’s get up there before they call out a search party,” Eleanora said, walking markedly slower now, letting Lyse set the pace.
“So where are we picking this person up?” Lyse asked.
“Arrabelle’s house. Arrabelle’s one of my blood sisters and the herbalist for our coven. Gives me all those nasty tonics and potions to take,” Eleanora said, shrugging. “Anyway, she’s up at the sacred grove, which is really no more than a clearing that the coven consecrated decades ago. She’s preparing everything we’ll need for tonight. But her apprentice is back at her house, and that’s whom we’re picking up. She’s a teenager and I didn’t want her walking through Elysian Park at night by herself.”
“Okay,” Lyse said, trying to digest all the information Eleanora was telling her.
“And, boy, if I haven’t shown you all the nasty stuff Arrabelle makes me take, believe me, in the morning you’re going to smell ’em.”
“That bad, eh?” Lyse asked.
“Worse,” Eleanora cackled. “Like drinking horse piss, only ten times fouler.”
Lyse laughed, relaxing now that they were having a proper conversation.
“Arrabelle was the one who made me see a real doctor. She forced my hand. I’d still be ignoring all of this”—she waved her hands around her body—“if I could. She’s just awful. You’ll hate her on sight.”
She winked at Lyse to let her know she was just kidding, but Lyse was keenly aware of how stubborn Eleanora was. If this Arrabelle person had forced her great-aunt to do something against her will, then she must be a real ball-buster.
“I believe it,” Lyse said. “You never listen to anyone.”
“Ha,” Eleanora said. “Speak for yourself. I had to kick you in the behind all the way to Athens, Georgia. You’d have holed up in that room of yours until doomsday if I’d let you.”
“What are you talking about?” Lyse said, confused by this turn in the conversation.
“You didn’t want to leave Echo Park. You weren’t going to go to college . . .”
“That’s not true,” Lyse said, coming to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. “I wanted to go to school.”
Eleanora slowed down but didn’t stop.
“I put you on the plane with a bottle of Pepto-Bismol in your hand. You were a mess.”
“I was nervous—”
“You cried and said you didn’t want to go,” Eleanora said, laughing.
This wasn’t at all how Lyse remembered it. She’d wanted to go to college, wanted to get her life started.
“Fuck you,” Lyse said. “That’s not how it happened—and stop laughing. It’s not funny.”
Eleanora stopped and put her hands on her hips.
“Don’t say fuck you to me. That’s not how I talk to you,” Eleanora replied, sounding more like her old self again. “I expect you to treat me with a little more respect than that. Especially when you’re a guest in my house.”
Lyse glared back at her, steeling herself for a fight.
“Then don’t make up stuff about me.”
“I’m not making anything up,” Eleanora said, exasperated. “You wanted to stay here with me. I wanted you to go out and explore the world, see some things before—”
“Before what?” Lyse asked.
Eleanora shook her head.
“So you made me go to Georgia,” Lyse continued, her voice shooting up an octave. “Because why? Because you’re a witch or something? I don’t understand.”
“Because I knew that you were going to follow in my footsteps one day and I wanted to give you a chance to know freedom first—”
“You’re nuts,” Lyse said, pushing past Eleanora and storming up the hill.
“You don’t even know where you’re going,” Eleanora yelled after her.
“So what!” Lyse yelled back at her. “It’s not like you really want me here with you, anyway—I’m just some prodigal child come home to do your bidding! Apparently you couldn’t wait to get rid of me before.”
Where the hell did that come from? Lyse thought, surprised by the vehemence in her words.
Hot tears cut a path down her cheeks, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand, quickening her pace as the wine bottles frantically banged into her lower back.
I don’t need this shit. I just want to go home, she thought—but then this raised the question: Where was her home? Was it here in Echo Park with Eleanora, or was it in Athens, where she’d already built a life for herself?
Confused was not the word for how she felt. It was worse than that. It was like two different people were trapped inside the same body, both wanting to lead entirely different lives. And as much as she thought of herself as an independent thinker, a woman who did what she wanted and listened only to her own heart, it was hard for her to admit that in this moment, she was completely without a compass.
“Lyse, wait!” Eleanora called after her.
The guilt she felt for antagonizing Eleanora took away the energy propelling her forward, and she stopped, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, breathing heavily.
It took Eleanora a few moments to catch up, but when she did she grabbed Lyse’s upper arm.
“Don’t you dare,” Eleanora said, eyes flashing. “Don’t you dare say I don’t want you. For God’s sake, that’s all I want.”
Eleanora sta
rted to cry, and Lyse felt terrible.
“Don’t cry,” Lyse pleaded. “Please.”
Eleanora just shook her head, the sobs coming from deep within her chest.
“I’ve always wanted you. I’ve had my failings as your parent. I admit that. But you were the best thing that ever happened to me. I couldn’t have asked for a better kid.”
Now Lyse was crying, too—and then they were laughing and crying together, holding on to each other.
“We’re silly old things, aren’t we?” Eleanora said, tears glistening in the wrinkles around her eyes.
“Pretty silly,” Lyse said, grinning back at her.
A security light winked on above them, bathing them in an orangey glow.
“You think someone’s trying to tell us something?” Eleanora asked.
Lyse snorted.
“Yeah. They’re saying: Stop blubbering in my driveway.”
“Well, thankfully, Arrabelle’s is only a few houses up the way,” Eleanora said.
Holding hands like schoolgirls, they took their time climbing the hill, each one careful not to rush the other. When they reached its crest, Eleanora raised a hand to point out Arrabelle’s place—a rough-hewn redwood frame clad in towering sheets of glass.
“This is your friend’s house?” Lyse asked, staring up at what she could only term as log cabin meets industrial modern.
Eleanora nodded.
“Pretty impressive, isn’t it?”
“To say the least,” Lyse replied.
“Arrabelle comes from a very wealthy family. You’ll see when you meet her. She’s fancy.”
To Lyse’s surprise, Eleanora reached for her hand again.
“Shall we?” Eleanora said, nodding toward the house.
“After you.”
Lyse followed Eleanora up the winding driveway, eyes on the massive front door.
Eleanora rang the bell, and a moment later the porch light came on. With the front entrance illuminated, Lyse could see carvings in the wooden door: abstract patterns and strange symbols that seemed familiar—though she couldn’t place them.
She opened her mouth to ask Eleanora about the carvings, but then the door creaked open. Standing in the doorway staring at them was the teenage girl from the coffee shop.