Brandy looked around. “I never saw so many people in one place in my life.”
Lisa decided not to explain that the town around the festival held a lot more. Not to mention the world outside the town.
Brandy swallowed hard. “Best check on Grandma.”
Good. Just in case the old woman was half as perplexed as Brandy looked. “I know just the place.”
After confirming that Grandma Nelson was, in fact, sipping some of Sal’s Simple Tea alone at a booth in the shade, Lisa showed Brandy how to shinny up the back of a sturdy art-glass booth and jump over to the stones above the waterfall. As they settled, Brandy looked uneasily down at the water door. “Are you afraid you’ll fall through?”
“I haven’t yet.” Lisa kicked at the stone so her tennis shoes bounced off, illustrating how secure their perch really was. The mixed scents of hot dogs, ketchup, beer, and stale frying grease made her wrinkle her nose. How come the junk food always smelled stronger than the stuff in the health food booths?
She looked down. A well-muscled blond man in jeans and a festival T-shirt approached Grandma Nelson’s table.
“Maybe Jack’ll make her go back,” Brandy said.
Lisa shook her head. “Why would he do that? Jack’s the one who showed me the door.”
“He’s on my side. He stayed with us two winters ago, and I heard him tell Grandma she should let me come over. Said he’d watch out for me. But she skewered him for it, said I needed to stay safe till I was a lot older.”
Lisa swallowed. She’d forgotten this might be the last day she saw Jack, too. The end of summer had sucked ever since she learned about the door last year. Almost a year without magic and with homework. “Jack told me about you,” she said.
Brandy looked up at her, smiling. “Funny, he never told me about you. But he always knows the perfect thing.”
“Yeah.” It was, too. Nothing made Lisa feel better than a day with Brandy. Below them, Jack was sitting down at the tale with Grandma Nelson. “Let’s see if we can hear what they’re saying.”
They scooted down the back of the rock. Once, Brandy’s black hat fell off and Lisa had to retrieve it—now with a wet brim—and wait for Brandy to tuck her hair back up into it. A three-foot high wall ran around the food court seating area, and the girls crept around it on their bellies, surprising a rabbit and two squirrels.
None of the people seemed to notice them.
The wall was far enough from Grandma Nelson’s table they had to strain to hear. Grandma’s voice was no better than a soft cadence, but Jack’s carried pretty well. “Just for the day. What’s the harm?”
Brandy whispered, “See?”
All their ears could pluck from the old woman’s reply was, “Stole . . . not again.”
Brandy’s eyes widened. “Did Jack know Mom?” she whispered, so quiet she must be asking herself.
Jack’s next words came quickly, with less respect than he usually gave the denizens of the High Hills. “Suit yourself.” He got up to leave, and as he came by, he tossed an empty coffee cup on top of Brandy’s hat so it balanced and spun for a moment before falling down. He leaned over the wall to retrieve it, whispering, “She’s mad.” He could have meant angry or insane.
“So stall her,” Lisa suggested.
Jack grunted, but he turned back to sit with Grandma Nelson. His voice carried back to them, slower and almost apologetic. “It was more like liberation.”
Lisa didn’t wait to see what kind of reaction he got. She wedged under a bush and popped out behind a different low wall climbing up and over, Brandy right behind her. “Jack’s keeping her busy. What do you want to do?”
“Is there anyplace quiet? I want to see if I can feel my mom around here.”
Lisa led her almost to the other side of the festival, threading through a rapt crowd bathing in music and poetry near the lawn set aside for buskers. Without stopping, Lisa seemed to walk through a wall like the waterfall door, but really it was a thin passage between two booths (hard-carved wooden toys on the left and pottery on the right). After going ten feet through a space too narrow for Grandma Nelson to follow, Lisa stopped where the back of the booth flared inward. She peeked carefully through a little window into the pottery booth. It was busy—way too busy for anyone from the booth to even notice the two girls. “Come on—it’s OK,” she whispered.
A ladder in the rock wall with just four steps led the girls up to a sunny ledge behind the booths that Lisa knew about because Carly, the woman from the shelter, had warned her never to come here with a certain silversmith by herself. But it was just noon, he’d be busy, and besides, she wasn’t alone.
Brandy surveyed the small space. “This’ll do. I need you to just be quiet for a moment.”
They settled back against the ledge, sitting in almost identical cross-legged poses. Brandy took off the hat and shook out her hair so the beads and shells in it crackled against each other, glittering in the sun. She pulled out a small mirror with tiles glued awkwardly around the edges. She held it between loose palms, a beatific smile on her face.
“What’s that?”
“It was Mom’s. She loved little bits of anything. She used to make me necklaces and she and I used to collect stuff from the riverbank and from abandoned crows’ nests. Now, shhhhhh . . .” She closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. Lisa tried to match her. She stayed with Brandy’s breath as it slowed and slowed and slowed until Lisa’s lungs screamed, and then she gulped in air while Brandy’s breath became even softer. Lisa let herself have three breaths and tried again. She wasn’t sure what she should feel, but she felt sure she was looking for something like a gentle peace. Sunshine heated the outside of her lids, making her drowsy. As her breath matched slow cadence with Brandy’s, a deep longing began to fill her, as if it were her mother who had been lost in a strange world.
“Gotcha!” Lisa’s eyes flew open to reveal Grandma Nelson’s face and one arm thrust through the window below the ledge. Brandy leaped straight up from her seated position and backed against the warm stone, pulling Lisa up after her. Brandy started toward the ladder, but Lisa hissed, “Climb!” and started clambering up the stone behind her, moving fast, finding slim handholds, praying forward momentum would get her the seven feet to where the rock started sloping gently into the hills. It did, barely, and she pitched forward so she was on hands and knees. Brandy stood beside her as if transported up the wall. Well, maybe she was.
Below them, Grandma Nelson looked pissed off. She snarled, “Come back here now, young lady!”
Brandy laughed at her and took two balls from her pocket, throwing them gently down the side of the ledge. Lisa’s mouth dropped in a wide O as the balls grew wings and fluttered toward the old woman. Yellow and blue butterflies the size of Lisa’s hand surrounded the balls, and then the balls were butterflies, swarming through the open window.
Grandma Nelson stepped back to avoid the onslaught of color.
Brandy tugged on her arm. “Where?”
Lisa shook her head to clear it of the magic operating here. She’d never seen anything like the butterfly balls, even in the High Hills. But she dragged her attention away and led Lisa in a quick jog up and around the rocks and along a path that ran behind the festival.
They jumped down near the silversmith’s booth, startling the young blond man Lisa’d been warned about. Two booths down, they stopped behind a rack of tie-dyed dresses. “You can’t just do magic here!” Lisa whispered loudly.
Brandy shrugged. “Why not?”
“Because . . . because . . . Can you teach me?”
A peal of high laughter escaped Brandy’s lips. “Later. Maybe. And thanks for taking me around the back way. I’d have run directly into her if we went back down that corridor.”
“Did you learn anything about your mom?”
“Just that she’s alive. But I knew that. There are so many people here I couldn’t get any sense of direction. But I don’t think she’s far.” The longing in her eyes
reminded Lisa of the ghostly longing she’d felt on the ledge. Brandy took off the hat and threw a long tie-dyed shawl with pink beaded fringe over her shoulders.
“I don’t think it’s you,” Lisa commented.
As Brandy hung the shawl back up, Lisa reached for a blue sleeveless cotton dress with yellow suns all over it. She pulled it over her friend’s head and frowned. “Only a little better. Maybe we need a booth that’s not so retro.”
“Old-fashioned.” Heck, it was all new to Brandy. “Maybe you should focus on your mom. The gate closes when the festival ends, and you’ll have to wait until next summer.” Lisa pulled a brush out of her pocket and swiped repeatedly at her hair. So far, this wasn’t even close to how she’d imagined her last festival day. “How about if I go talk to your grandmother? You can go find someplace quiet and I’ll show her around the festival.”
“Right. She’s stronger than you are.”
Lisa frowned. “Maybe not.”
Brandy shook her head. “We should stay together.”
There was that. Lisa sighed. “So, magic isn’t working. Maybe we just need to go talk to her. Do it in a public place.”
“She never just talks to me,” Brandy said. “All we know how to do is fight.”
Well, all she and her mom knew how to do was mumble at each other. Better than fighting, but still . . . “Where is she, anyway? Can you tell?”
“Behind you.”
Lisa turned. The old woman was behind her, but walking away from both girls. “What? Did she give up?”
“No. She wants more tea.” A strange look crossed Brandy’s face. “I think she’s confused.” Brandy started after her. Lisa looked at the hat left behind and Brandy walking away in the dress, her jeans and tennis shoes sticking out so she seemed like a teenage bag lady. She shook her head, but didn’t have any words left to bite back. As she caught up with the blue dress, Brandy reached over and asked, “Do you have the spider?”
Lisa fished it out of her pocket. One of its legs was bent back at an odd angle. “Can I give it to her?”
Brandy shook her head. “Nope. It’s my message.”
“All right, then.” She dropped the spider into Brandy’s hand. She almost felt sorry for Grandma Nelson. “Let her get her tea first.”
A few minutes later they spotted her by the food court, conspicuously red and purple and way too bundled up for the heat. Lisa fished in her pocket. “I have enough for us to split a lemonade.”
Five minutes later, Brandy and Lisa, two straws, and one lemonade occupied a table. Grandma Nelson walked slowly over and sat down with a huff, sipping on a cup of Sal’s Simple Tea—with ice this time. She narrowed her eyes at the girls.
Like what? Did she think Lisa was a bug?
After the tea was half gone, she said, “You two look fine sitting there together.”
Lisa wanted to giggle. Brandy looked funny in the dress and jeans and she was sure her clothes looked a mess after being wet and dry so many times in one day.
Brandy answered by holding the spider out on her palm. It rounded and changed, waving its bent leg first and then the others, squatting as if waiting. Grandma Nelson put her hand out and the spider jumped into it. It ran up her thin arm and climbed her purple dress sleeve and her red coat and went to her ear. The old woman cocked her head, frowning. As she listened to the little spider, her frown deepened, the wrinkles around her mouth becoming chasms and ravines.
She looked at Brandy, unvoiced questions filling her dark, cool eyes.
Lisa sipped her lemonade, trying to stay small and quiet.
Brandy cleared her throat and Grandma Nelson smiled tiredly at her. She plucked the spider from her shoulder and dropped it on the table. “All right.” Before it even hit the wood, its softness started to turn, and it bounced once gently and stopped, the wire legs holding it up. Grandma Nelson said, “Jack will be right along.”
“So he does know my mom?” Brandy breathed out slowly.
Grandma Nelson put up one hand and said, “Wait,” and then folded her arms on the table, folded her head over her arms, and started snoring softly.
“So what’s that all about?” Lisa asked.
Brandy looked over at her. “Spider says I should be with you. That’s what I told her.”
Lisa grinned. “What about your mom?”
“I said that, too.” Brandy shook her head. “But mostly I said I want to be your friend.”
Well, that matched what Lisa wanted. They put their feet up and watched tanned young women tend kids dressed in fancy clothes and couples wander around with bags full of last-day bargains. A booth grilling hamburgers tortured Lisa’s stomach with the smell. What next? If they got up, would Brandy’s grandmother wake up and follow them?
A plate with fries and three burgers wafted over Lisa’s head, attached to Jack’s long arm. He sat down, his eyes twinkling. “Last day celebration. I talked Joe into making me some lunch for free.”
“Aren’t you hungry?” Lisa asked.
Jack shook his head.
The girls each took a hamburger while Brandy’s grandmother’s snores grew louder.
Jack looked tenderly at the old woman. “You two wore her out today.”
“But she never wears out!” Brandy said.
Jack shook his head. “Your mom wore her out a long time ago.”
“Where is she?” Lisa asked, still not quite buying the dead idea.
Jack shook his head. “She can’t get back to the High Hills.” He covered Brandy’s hand with his. “She’s tried. I’m sorry.”
A tear glistened in Brandy’s left eye and Lisa reached up and wiped it away. “Me, too.”
“But I’m here. I want to see her.”
Jack looked concerned, but glanced at Lisa rather than Brandy. “You might not. This place has worn her out.”
“But you do OK over here,” Lisa observed.
“But it almost destroyed your mom,” he said.
Lisa blinked at him. Her mom? “Is that why I can go through the gate?”
“That’s why you go through so easily.” He looked from Lisa to Brandy and back again. “And that’s why you two get along so well.”
“But . . . but does that make me magic? Like her?”
He laughed. “Of course you’re magic. Look, I can’t leave today. Not the last day. Go get your mom.”
She didn’t want to ask him if her mom was Brandy’s mom. Not in front of her friend. What if he said no?
What if he said yes?
All the compassion in the world seemed to settle into Jack’s face, but there was steel there as well. “Go on. Tell her I asked her to come down.”
She went.
Her mom was still at the kitchen table, still in pajamas. A glorious blue and yellow sun leaped from the tiles on the table in front of her. “That’s great, Mom. You’ll get a bunch for that.”
Her mom nodded, picking up a tiny sliver of orange to highlight the stone sun’s corona. That one tiny new tile made the whole piece warmer.
Lisa headed for her mom’s closet and returned with jeans and a clean white shirt. “Mom? Can you get dressed? Jack said for you to come to the festival.”
Her mom shook her head. “You know I never go there.”
“Please? I want you to meet my friend.”
Silence seemed to stretch through minutes. “Please? I’ll help you do your hair.”
A tired sigh answered. “All right.”
Lisa helped her mom dress, brushed her hair out and put it back in a blue bow to match her eyes, and reminded her to wash the tile dust from her fingers. She stood back a bit. Her handiwork wasn’t too bad.
She took her mom through the artist’s gate. If that surprised her, it didn’t show. But her blue eyes widened as Lisa led her to the table where Jack and Brandy waited. At their approach, Grandma Nelson sat up in her seat and stared, her gaze riveted. It seemed like a lecture struggled to start on her tightly drawn lips, but as the older woman looked closely her shoulders
dropped.
Brandy’s head swiveled back and forth as if she needed to see everyone at once. Lisa stepped back far enough to see both her mom and Grandma Nelson.
The last full rays of sun shone down on their faces, highlighting similar strong jaws and just slightly crooked noses. The younger woman blinked, putting a hand over her eyes as if to hide her vision. Then her hand shook, and she dropped it, and her shoulders shook, and Grandma Nelson stood up and enclosed her in a hug.
Brandy leaned into Jack, whispering, “Is that Mom?” barely loud enough for Lisa to hear.
Jack put a hand over Brandy’s slender shoulders. “Wait.”
The two women stood silently, holding each other, until Brandy’s mom stopped shaking. Jack stood and took Brandy’s hand. “Let’s leave them for a bit.”
Lisa followed them away from the food booths to stand by the waterfall door. Lisa eyed it. “Why can’t Mom go through? What happened when she tried?”
“She just ran into the rock. Tried it over and over, crying afterward. That’s what happens when people lose hope.”
Brandy grabbed Lisa’s hand. “At least you can go. You know this means we’re sisters? That’s even better than being friends.”
As Lisa stared at the water, she could smell the oak and grass of the High Hills, feel the afternoon breeze against her skin. “Yes.” She almost felt like she could fly to the High Hills and never come back.
“I think you two should stay for the last-night party,” Jack said. “Be sisters.”
Brandy smiled. “Yes. But I want to go see Mom.”
Jack grunted. “Leave her be for now. Some hurts are even deeper than yours.” He cupped Brandy’s cheek and gazed softly down at her. “You did your part. You got your grandma over here.”
Brandy nodded.
The girls wandered the booths. Brandy traded the dress for a suede coat and then a pair of high-heeled boots. It didn’t bother Lisa at all.
As night fell, a whole band of professional Celtic musicians graced the sawdust paths. Drummers pounded from the buskers’ area. Jack himself howled like a coyote from behind the wooden walls and the other maintenance people (none from the High Hills) made a big ruckus over catching him, then made him sing “Danny Boy,” and Brandy stood beside him for the last chorus while Lisa clapped.
Fellowship Fantastic Page 13