What Gifts She Carried

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  “Leigh? You’re here?” she asked.

  I drew my eyebrows together. “I guess so?”

  She perched on a chair next to Ms. Hansen and put her arm around me in an awkward hug. “I just thought you’d take a break after all you’ve been through. You did amazing things last night. I really don’t know how we can thank you.”

  I squirmed. Gushing Spanish teachers/Sorceresses made me uncomfortable.

  “Uh, well,” Jo piped in. “Maybe she wouldn’t have to take the Spanish final. And maybe certain best friends wouldn’t either.” She waved a hand in the air for dramatic emphasis. “Sorceressi possession is such a nasty thing.”

  A slow grin crossed my face. Jo met it with one of her own. She sure could be a genius sometimes.

  Mrs. Rios nodded, her dark eyes twinkling underneath her pixie haircut. “A pluses to both of you.”

  “Well done, Jo,” Ms. Hansen said and adjusted the pencil on top of her head with a smile.

  Mrs. Rios yawned then shook the bangs from her face. “It’s a good thing school’s about over. Those eight hour watches don’t leave much time for grading papers or sleeping. Of course I’m happy to do it until those two are convicted to the Core.”

  “You’re guarding One and Two?” I asked.

  “With Herman’s help. We each take a shift and aim his bug spray at them in eight hour intervals.” Ms. Hansen unwound a strand from her bun and popped it in her mouth so she looked normal. Normal for her anyway.

  “So they don’t go all buggy again and escape,” I said.

  “And to help Our Trammeler, who happens to have his hands quite full,” Mrs. Rios said.

  Jo pointed at both of them with her corndog. “You’re helping him even though you know it could get you killed? Why?”

  I shot her a look. Somehow I sensed that her question was meant more for me instead of them.

  “It’s true. Siding with Our Trammeler and therefore the Counselor puts us on the unpopular list with the rest of the Sorceresses,” Ms. Hansen said, folding her hands on top of the table. “But I can’t stand by and let our system of justice, however flawed it is, fail. The Core can’t open, and I know there are others out there who agree.”

  “They’re just too scared to speak up,” Mrs. Rios said. “Like I was. But I refuse to side with the woman who killed my husband or to her supporters who didn’t blink twice about almost killing an innocent child.” She patted my arm and winced, and I couldn’t tell if her bandaged hand had hurt her or if she was sorry she’d mentioned that last part.

  Ms. Hansen nodded. “It was time to stand up to Gretchen instead of just printing an underground Sorceress newsletter nobody ever reads.”

  Jo caught my eye and nodded. We’d read the orange paper copies of I Dream In Unicorn while trying to find a way for me to survive. Right before a spider had crawled out of Jo’s mouth. I shuddered.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” Mrs. Rios said.

  “Leigh’s going to start training with Tram,” Jo said with a sigh.

  “Good,” Ms. Hansen said. “Our Trammeler needs all the help he can get.”

  “After seeing what you did to Ica, you’ll be a big help to him,” Mrs. Rios said.

  “But he can only help me with the Trammeler part.” I played with the corner of my tray, frowning. “Not the Sorceress part.”

  “Those powers just develop naturally, and each Sorceress is different in terms of how their magic takes shape,” Mrs. Rios said. “Like my wings, for example, and Ms. Hansen’s hair-reading ability.”

  I remembered Mrs. Rios’s wings quite well. They’d burst from her back in a great lacy flourish at her apartment after One and Two had showed up.

  “You’ve never done anything out of the ordinary with little to no concentration?” Mrs. Rios asked.

  I shrugged. “I once turned a news reporter into a tree, but that’s about it.”

  Ms. Hansen nodded while chewing a strand of hair thoughtfully. “I believe those came from your Trammeler side, given the tree aspect. If you haven’t done anything else similar to that, then perhaps your Sorceress powers have been suppressed. I might have a book that explains it better than I could.” She stood and flitted to her back office.

  “Suppressed?” I asked.

  “Silenced, in a sense,” Mrs. Rios said, checking her watch, “and put away for safe keeping. The power’s essence is hidden somewhere. Well, I better let you two get back to your...lunch.” She pushed her lips together into a thin, wobbly line and stood. “See you in class, ladies. If you have questions about any of this, I’ll give you bonus points if you ask them in Española.”

  “Adios,” Jo and I said together.

  The sudden lull in voices and the drone of jet motors inside the ancient computers dragged at my eyelids. I rested my head in the crook of my arm. Jo looked like she might fall asleep in her mountain of ketchup.

  Something slammed in front of me, and I jolted upright. Three ornate trees decorated the frayed, greenish brown book on the table. Faded gold lettering spelled The Sorceress’s Trinity across the cover. Two, maybe three, of Darby’s Before Merlin’s Beard books could fit inside.

  “Wow,” Jo said, staring at it.

  “Yeah.” Without even opening it, I knew the print would be as small as the tip of a pen. If it would help me, I would read it, but the thought of flipping through it cover to cover pricked my fingertips with urgency. I didn’t have time to wade through a bunch of useless information to get to the important parts.

  “Sorceresses aren’t as finicky as Trammelers about paper,” Ms. Hansen said. “That’s only volume one.”

  I dropped my head into my hands with a groan. “Please don’t tell me how many volumes there are.”

  “I won’t, and there aren’t any Cliff’s Notes, either. Sorry.” Ms. Hansen circled the table and sat next to Jo, her cheeks swelled out like balloons, as if there was something in her head she didn’t want to release with her next breath. Finally, she relaxed her face. “I rinsed the mud from your hair last night, Leigh.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And...I still couldn’t read anything from it.” Ms. Hansen stared at her hands and shook her head. “It tastes almost like...”

  Jo leaned forward with lifted eyebrows. “Almost like what?”

  Ms. Hansen glanced at me then back at her hands. “I could cut off a new strand and try that.”

  “Almost like what?” I tried to burn a hole through her with my gaze. It couldn’t be that bad. Could it?

  Ms. Hansen grimaced while she swallowed thickly. “I don’t know what it means, Leigh. But your hair... It tastes like you have no future. Like you’re...dead.”

  Chapter 4

  Dead girl walking. Actually, dead girl sitting because I was too tired to walk. I sat on the walkway outside the motel room with my legs poking between the bars and dangling over the edge.

  Ms. Hansen’s words made no sense. I wasn’t dead. My heart pulsed under my hand, just like it had the whole afternoon since she’d told me I tasted dead. I’d pulled out a few more strands of hair for her to try again. She’d stuck them in her mouth and shook her head with an apologetic look.

  I was just like Sarah, only I didn’t look like her. No sagging black mouth. No whispering. No stink like a rotten cow inside a car trunk on a hot summer day, though I did kind of smell like sweaty armpits.

  So what did this mean? How could I be dead? Yeah, I’d been buried alive, but I didn’t die. I wouldn’t be sitting here if I had.

  I groaned into the thin metal bar in front of my face and leaned my head against it. Stupid me for thinking everything would go back to normal after last night. Nothing would be normal again, especially since I had secret superpowers I knew zilch about. Tram could train me, sure, but even though I knew it wasn’t possible, I wished Mom could share this with me. I needed her, now more than ever.

  My throat tightened just thinking about her. I gripped the bars and choked on a hard swallow.

  It was Mo
m who’d been leaving me notes by her headstone. She’d warned me not to go to Whaty-Whats, Gretchen’s cult headquarters. I’d gone anyway, of course, since rain had smudged the note and made it unreadable.

  I wanted to visit her grave again to see if she’d left me another message, but at the same time, I didn’t. I wasn’t sure if I could visit the graveyard ever again after what had happened. But I did need to ask her if she was a ghost or something, and why she wasn’t acting like a dead person, either. But mostly just to talk to her. And to read her notes. Now that I knew they were from her, I would listen. Maybe she could help me train by way of notes and our ESP link we shared. Death couldn’t cut that tie with the sharpest scissors in the world.

  Score one point for being dead, though. Dad had said I was grounded for the rest of my life, after all. One problem solved, a thousand more to go.

  The Sorceress’s Trinity tome rested open in my lap, but there wasn’t a table of contents page with a chapter titled ‘So You’re A Sorceress–Now What?’ None of it made much sense anyway. It was mostly about how great and strong Sorceressi were. And the title? Did Sorceressi really think the Trinity belonged to them?

  If the first page I flipped to was any indication of their massive egos, yes they did.

  The Counselor of Death could not capture the strikingly beautiful Sorceress Adeline. On and on she ran until she sensed a great power, almost as magnificent as her own power and almost as strong as her oak tree. She stopped at the gateway between life and death, known to most beings as a graveyard, where a handsome, fair-haired man stood in the center of the oak, the ash, and the hawthorn.

  “Trammeler,” Adeline said. “Can you help me escape The Counselor?”

  Blushing at her immense beauty, the man replied, “See where you stand? You are in the center of the Trinity trees. The power of three is found between these three trees, and each of them represents life, death, and life again.”

  “The power of three,” Adeline breathed, unable to look away from the man who knew the trees. “Do you mean life, death, and resurrection?”

  “That is what I mean,” the man said with a smile. He was so struck with her splendor that he wanted nothing more than to help her.

  Adeline’s clear blue eyes grew wide. “Resurrection will rid me of death...forever.”

  “As well as give you great power, but only if you have the essence of the ash tree, as well as your oak, inside your blood when you die. Then and only then will hawthorn blood flow through you with death.”

  “Then immortality,” Adeline said.

  The man nodded with his heart in his mouth. Never before had he seen someone quite so exquisite as she. “The power will be so great, that the Trinity trees will weep their own immortality from their limbs in blood.”

  A great storm came upon them then. Lightning bolted into the hawthorn tree and split it wide. The thorns scurried across its broken limbs and down its trunk like thin, spidery legs to form a man.

  “Oh, but that just won’t do,” the Counselor of Death said.

  He did not care for Adeline giving this man stolen glances from behind her lustrous auburn waves. All he wanted was to make her his, but he would need to ring a thousand bells for her to look on him as she did this Trammeler.

  “That kind of power will crush the door of the Core prison,” the Counselor of Death continued. “Perhaps we could reach an arrangement.”

  A car pulled up under my left boot, but it wasn’t Mrs. Gonzalez delivering Darby. Rusty holes gaped open along the bottom of the doors, spotting the already faded blue paintjob. The driver’s door cracked open, and only a pale hand crept out to grasp the top of the car. Bone thin fingers arched up like claws.

  I twisted the bottom hem of my shirt and clenched it into a fist. Images from last night flashed in my mind. Hands punching through graves, reaching up to clamber out. Mom’s hands. My hands. I’d done well throughout the day to keep the memories hidden. Until now. A drop of sweat raced to my nose where Darby’s sunglasses caught it.

  The car door creaked open, and a scrawny woman with frizzy hair and a cigarette jutting from her mouth climbed out. Deep wrinkles creased her face. She shot me a vicious look with gray eyes, probably a warning to stay away from her beloved broomstick. Or car. Same thing. She disappeared inside a room on the lower floor.

  I stood and leaned over the railing as far as I could. Maybe being out here in the open wasn’t such a good idea, but I needed to know the instant Mrs. Gonzalez pulled up so I would know Darby was safe. Besides, the sunlight wasn’t so bad since it was dipping behind the motel.

  Seconds later, Mrs. Gonzalez pulled in next to the broomstick with Maria and Darby in the backseat. Darby dragged herself and her stuffed mermaid backpack out of the car and waved goodbye.

  Relief swept through me. I tried to wave, but my fingers had poked holes in my shirt and tangled there.

  “Did you put the whole library in your backpack?” I called down.

  Darby squinted up at me. What little afternoon sunlight was left glinted off her glasses. “Mrs. Bonham says smart fourth graders learn long division while they’re in third grade.” She adjusted her straps over her thin shoulders with a grimace. “I think Mrs. Bonham should be arrested.”

  I bit back a laugh and jerked my head for her to come up. “Let’s go to the snack machine so you can smear Cheetos all over your homework.”

  She grinned. “That’s a great idea.” Her blonde ponytail bobbed as she lugged herself up the stairs with her backpack swinging from side to side.

  She seemed like regular Darby. No hidden terrors lingered behind her blue eyes. Maybe she’d forgotten all about what had spooked her last night. Lucky girl.

  When we had enough bags of Cheetos to turn our intestines orange, we spread our homework across the round table in the motel room. I took off the sunglasses, thankful to be in the near dark, and gave them back to Darby.

  “Why do you have these if you have glasses?” I asked.

  “I put them over my glasses.” She unfolded them and stuck them on her nose. “Like this.”

  I snorted. “How very geeky of you.”

  She shrugged and kept the sunglasses on while she worked. When she smeared salty, sticky crumbs over the paper between long division problems, she went into giggling hysterics. Fake cheese stunk up the room.

  I kept quiet about the night before even though her dangling over the balcony and our matching bloody noses had stitched itself into my memory forever. It wasn’t that those things were weird individually, but combined with the night I’d had, major unease pricked needles over my scalp.

  “Hey, what were you really doing last night on the balcony? You can tell me,” I said.

  She stuck her eraser into one of the holes on her notebook paper. “I heard tapping was all. I think it was just a bird.”

  That didn’t explain how she’d ended up folded over the balcony railing, but I didn’t push it since she was only on number fifteen out of thirty problems. She would tell me when she was ready, and if she wasn’t bothered by it, then why should I be? But of course I was.

  Her pencil scratched the paper, the soft continuous sound pulling my eyes closed. But a loud crunch right next to my ear jerked me awake.

  Darby pointed a half-eaten Cheeto at me. “You were snoring.”

  “I was not. I was only out for a...” I blinked, wondering if I was still asleep.

  Darby was scratching her wrist. A red dot bumped her skin.

  I gasped and snatched her arm. Chills coursed across my back. “What bit you?”

  “I don’t know.” Darby yanked her arm back, but I didn’t let go. “Maybe a spider. Our house was infested with them before our yard turned black, remember?”

  “How long has it been there?” I demanded.

  “I don’t know, Leigh.” She pulled her arm again, and this time I let her go.

  The Cheetos tossed in my stomach. She was bit in the exact same spot I’d been. It couldn’t be a coincidence. But when
had it happened? Before One and Two had been captured? Or after?

  The air grew heavy in the room. I struggled to breathe. “We have to go.”

  Darby stared at me and frowned. “Go where?”

  Crap. We couldn’t go anywhere. Tram couldn’t feel me anyway.

  “Dad said this morning you weren’t supposed to leave the room when you got here,” Darby said. “You’re grounded, remember?”

  “Shut up,” I snapped. The hurt look on her face made me instantly regret it. “Sorry, Darby. Just be quiet for a sec.” I pulled my cell from my backpack and texted Jo.

  911: Tell Tram Darby got bit.

  “Why are you freaking out?” Darby asked, then her mouth dropped open in a gasp. “Does this have to do with dark magic like you were talking about last night?” Her voice came out in a horrified whisper.

  I pressed my lips together. She was referring to our conversation we’d had about how dark magic had brought Sarah back and killed our yard. I shook my phone, willing Jo to hurry.

  Running away from mayors secretary now, she texted back.

  I took Darby’s arm and rubbed my thumb over the bite. It looked red and swollen, and in the middle, two tiny holes punctured the skin. A spider. It had to be.

  “Come on, Jo,” I muttered through clenched teeth.

  “Please, Leigh. Tell me what’s wrong.” Darby yanked her arm out of my grip so hard her glasses slanted across her nose. “You’re scaring me.”

  “No—” I started.

  My phone rang.

  Dad burst through the door. “Guess what, girls?” he asked with a smile. “We get to go home.”

  We just stood there, staring at him, while my phone rang again.

  “Home?” Darby asked in a small voice. She looked so hopeful, as if she’d missed it as much as me.

  Dad loosened his tie and snaked it out of his shirt collar. “I just met the entire Kansas Department of Agriculture in our front yard. They’re taking grass and soil samples and are just as perplexed as me as to how it healed itself. But they said we can go home.” He glanced down at my ringing phone. “Are you going to get that?”