by Devon Monk
Cute. I didn’t know she had a cat.
“Where shall we start?” Nola asked. “Your birthday. Do you remember me calling and telling you to come out and visit me?”
I frowned. “I don’t think—no, I don’t think so.” I picked up the spoon and was surprised at how heavy it was.
“I left you a message because you weren’t at your apartment. You later told me you were Hounding a hit up in St. John’s.”
The room got hot all of a sudden and twirled like a merry-go-round. I wanted to puke. I think I dropped my spoon. Somewhere in that gut-wrenching chaos were my memories of St. John’s, but no matter how far into it I leaned, I could not snag the bronze ring and retrieve them.
“Here now,” Nola said.
She was above me. I was lying again, covered in sweat. But at least the room had stopped spinning. She put a cool cloth on my forehead and I reveled in the simple, soothing pleasure of it. Okay, maybe I wasn’t feeling as good as I thought I was.
“You’re fine,” she said. “I’ll go slower. We have plenty of time to straighten this out. Plenty. Sleep now. Sleep.”
And I did.
The next day, or at least I hoped it was the next day, I woke early. Tendrils of anxious dreams slid away, leaving me with nothing but a hollow feeling of loneliness. My arm no longer had the IV hooked to it, so I decided to go take a bath.
I pushed the covers back, levered up, and rested a while before making my way slowly, hand on the walls for balance, into the bathroom. I sat on the edge of the tub and rested until I stopped trembling, then finally stood and stripped naked.
The image in the mirror was a shock. Whorls of metallic ribbons marked me from temple to fingertip on my right, rings of black banded my fingers, wrist, and elbow on my left. The blood magic scars on my left deltoid were slashes of red.
A ragged, pink scar as wide as my hand puckered just below my ribs on my left, and a thumb-sized circle sat just below my collarbone.
Wow. So much for wearing a bikini.
I leaned against the sink and stared at my eyes, trying to fit this reality of the new me with the knowledge of the old me. My eyes were still pale green like my father’s, I still had short hair, though it looked like I needed a cut soon, and I was a little on the thin side. Still, I was me.
“This is it,” I whispered. “This is me now. I can deal with it.”
There was a knock on the door. “Allie?”
“I’m going to take a bath,” I said.
“Need any help?”
I did. And I knew Nola would be happy to be of assistance. But what I needed even more than her help was my life back, or at least a sense of normalcy. And that meant sucking it up and taking care of things myself as much as I could.
“I got it so far.”
She waited outside the door. I took a deep breath and made it back to the tub. I crawled into it and eased down onto the cold ceramic. I turned on the spigots until the water poured out hot.
“I’ll get breakfast started and bring you some towels,” Nola said through the door.
“I can do it,” I lied. Luckily, she was already gone.
Turns out I did need help getting out of the tub, getting dried, and getting dressed. I also needed some help back to bed. Even so, I felt pretty good about my accomplishment for the day.
I leaned back against the pillows Nola propped between me and the headboard of the bed, and breathed hard until my heart stopped beating so fast.
“A couple more days like this, and I’ll be ready to run a marathon.”
“How about you get through a meal without passing out first?” Nola said.
“Spoilsport.”
She smiled. “I have oatmeal for breakfast. What kind of tea do you want?”
“No coffee?”
“Let’s start with tea.”
“Fine. Do you have mint?”
Nola frowned. “Mint? Are you sure?”
“I think so. Why? Don’t I like mint?”
She shrugged. “You’ve never asked me for it before, but maybe you developed a taste for it recently.”
I thought about that, tried to remember if I drank mint tea, but no clear image came back to me. What came to me was an emotional memory of the comfort, ease, and pleasure mint could offer. For whatever reason, I liked mint and I missed it. A lot.
“I guess,” I said.
Nola patted my leg and strolled out of the room.
She spent the rest of the day giving me back what memories she could. Not much of it made sense, but I carried an unconscious knowledge, an afterimage of it all deep in my subconscious. My emotional memory was intact. I remembered the grief, the anger, the fear, the pain, if not the actual events themselves.
My father had died.
I’d been shot. Twice.
Accused of murder.
Cleared of that accusation by Mama’s and Cody’s testimony.
I had drawn upon magic so hard that it had been permanently burned into my skin, my bones.
I healed someone.
I’d totally missed out on my birthday. No presents, no party, no song.
I had missed my father’s funeral.
And I might even have fallen in love with a man named Zayvion Jones.
I had done so much, and lost it all.
Nola didn’t seem to think it was something out of the ordinary for me to deal with, but I didn’t think I had ever lost this much memory at one time before. That magic I’d done—the last thing in Mama’s kitchen that Zayvion had apparently told Nola about—had nearly killed me.
If you used magic, it used you too, and I had used the hell out of it, probably without setting a Disbursement. It was just my luck that my price had been twofold, physical pain—a coma—and massive memory loss.
I hoped I had made the right choice. I hoped that if I still knew what I had known then, I would make the same choice.
Wishing I’d done something different—maybe not used magic so much, maybe not gone up to St. John’s, maybe not gone to see my dad, maybe not tried to help Cody—would only drive me insane. And most of the time I felt too close to crazy already.
About a week through my recovery, when I had graduated to the couch and could get around the house slowly on my own, I sat in the living room and picked up my little blank book.
Nola was in town, talking to some people about becoming a caregiver for Cody. She felt strongly that getting him away from any place that had magic would be best for all concerned. And from what she’d told me about him, I agreed.
I opened the book. The first few pages had my name, birthday, and medical allergies listed. Some other things too, like the number for the police, for the hospital, my address, and Nola’s. Filling most of the pages after that were the notes I had taken before my birthday.
From the date of my birthday forward were only a few sparse notes outlining Mama’s call to me, the Hounding job I’d done on Boy, the trip I’d made to see my dad. My hands shook at that, and my throat felt tight, but I kept reading. I had notes that covered the blood magic Truth spell my dad had lied about, my suspicions about Zayvion, my desire to go to the police and testify against my father.
And that was it.
Nothing more.
All the rest of the pages were blank.
I thumbed through them, all of them, looking for any other note, any other word.
Blank. Blank. Blank. Dozens and dozens of stupid, white, empty pages. Why hadn’t I written more? What was wrong with me? I always kept good notes. Always. Why wasn’t there something in there about the magic marks? About healing? Why wasn’t there something in there about how I really felt about Zayvion?
I threw the book across the room, and immediately felt stupid for doing so. I rubbed at the headache behind my temples.
So I’d screwed up and hadn’t taken notes. Deal with it, I told myself. Freaking out wouldn’t put words on the page. Making a vow to do better from now on might do some good.
And I could start now. Wr
ite that I am angry I didn’t keep better notes. Sounded like a dumb idea, but then I decided that I should do it. Every detail I wrote down was one more bit of my life I got to keep.
I got up, retrieved the book, and found a pen on the coffee table. I sat back on the couch and opened the book to a clean page. Maybe I should start with waking up here.
So I did.
After about a half hour, I heard the crunch of tires on gravel. Nola was home.
She unlocked the door, letting in the clean, cold smell of rain and dirt. She strolled in carrying a bright blue bag with a bow on it.
“Happy belated birthday.” She dropped the bag on my lap.
Before I could say anything, before I could worry about how to thank her for doing such a wonderful, thoughtful, kind thing when I was feeling so sour and petty, she said, “You’re welcome. Open it.”
I sat up straighter and grinned. “Thank you.” I pulled tissue paper out of the bag and peeked in it. Whorls of colors, of thread—no, yarn—filled the bag.
“Yarn?” I lifted out a skein each of pastel orange, rose, blue, purple, and green, colors that mimicked the marks of magic on my hand. Two long wooden needles, and several other short wooden needles with a point on each end, including a couple tied together by a plastic cord, remained in the bag.
“Yarn and knitting needles,” Nola said happily.
I pulled out the long needles, and tried to intuit if I had ever held anything like them before. They didn’t feel familiar. “Do I? Have I ever?”
“No. Not at all. I’ve chosen a new hobby for you to learn. We can knit together. You’ll like it.”
I raised one eyebrow. “I think I should be the judge of that.”
She chuckled. “I knew you’d say that. I’ll teach you the basics, then I thought maybe we could try to make you some nice gloves.”
“Why do I need gloves? Are you putting me to work around here?”
“No.” She gave me a serious, almost sad look. “You can’t stay out here forever, Allie. You need to go back to the city. Back to your life there. And if you find out you don’t like it, you know you can come back until you decide what you want to do next.”
“You’re kicking me out?” I meant it to sound funny, but it came out sort of small and sad.
“You’d get bored soon anyway, and curious about what you left behind. I know you. You don’t like to leave things unsettled, and a lot of things are unsettled. Your dad’s business, your relationship with your stepmom, your Hounding business.” She paused. “And you need to settle things with Zayvion. He stayed here by your bed for two weeks. I think there are things unsaid between you.”
“Really? Is that why he calls? Why he stops in to see me now that I’m conscious?” He had done neither of those things, and apparently it annoyed me even though Nola didn’t have a phone so, technically, he couldn’t call.
Nola pressed her lips together, then stood. She pulled something out from behind a vase of flowers on the mantel. It was an envelope. She handed it to me.
My name, in writing I did not recognize, was on the front.
“He left you this.”
“Have you read it?”
She shook her head.
I stared at it for what felt like a long time. “I think I want to know what he has to say to me face-to-face.”
“Are you sure?”
I was sure. Very sure. “If he has something to say to me, I want to watch him say it. I need that. I deserve that.”
Nola patted my knee. “I agree. But you don’t have to go anywhere today. Maybe when the gloves are done you’ll be ready to wear them to your favorite coffee shop. Then, after you settle back into life in the big city, you can get in touch with him.”
Talking about Zayvion stirred feelings in me I was not comfortable addressing. I was so ready for a change of subject. “Did you take a class to become wise and all-knowing, or were you just born bossy?”
“Both. Now are you going to stop complaining and try something new”—she pointed to the skeins of yarn—“or are you coming out to help me clean the chicken coops?”
“When you put it that way, how can I turn down knitting?”
“I’ll get my needles,” she said. “We can do a little before lunch.”
She jogged up the stairs to her bedroom and the kitten padded into the room. It eyed the skeins of yarn and mewed. I pulled out the end of a string and dangled it over the edge of the couch. The kitten belonged to Cody. Nola said she’d found her out in the field the day after Zay and I had left.
“How did it go with the attorneys?” I said, loud enough for my voice to carry.
“Good,” she yelled down. “We’re closer to convincing the authorities that Cody would be well served out here.” She headed back down the stairs, a tapestry tote in one hand. “The sheriff has decided to get involved. He says it’s because he’s concerned for all of the citizens under his jurisdiction. I think he sees a golden opportunity for some media exposure.”
The kitten bounded all of six inches and attacked the thread dangling in my hand.
Nola made a sour face and plunked down on the couch next to me. “I don’t like the sheriff’s interest, but his involvement was like pouring grease on gears. It looks like I might even have Cody out here as soon as this summer, if all goes well.”
“And if it doesn’t?” I asked, tugging back on the string and fishing the kitten up onto her hind feet.
“You know me. I am not the kind of woman who gives up on the people she cares for.”
Oh. She meant me, too. “Thanks,” I said.
She pulled out two long, wooden needles and a ball of light blue yarn. “Ready?”
I tossed the skein of yarn under the coffee table for the kitten to chase, then picked one of my yarns, the mint green-colored one, and nodded. “Let’s do this.”
“Good. First, make a slip knot.”
Nola had an annoying habit of being right.
About two weeks later, when she and I had both finished a set of gloves and knitted matching scarves, I knew it was time for me to go. The rains of September were now November sleet, and the ground stayed frozen all day.
It was time for this bird to fly south. Well, north and west, really, to Portland, before the snows made it hard to get over the pass.
I made some phone calls. First to my bank, and found out I’d had a sizable deposit transferred into my account at the beginning of the month. When I asked them to trace it back, they said it was from Daniel Beckstrom’s estate.
And yeah, that creeped me out. Even dead, my dad was trying to influence my life. And at the same time, it was probably one of the nicest things he’d ever done for me. I was so damn broke right now, not to mention the new debt for the hospital stay before Nola and, as she told me, my stepmother Violet bullied people to get me transferred out here, away from magic, and into Nola’s capable hands.
Of course, I had not forgotten I was late on rent. Months late now.
I called my landlord, and he had my apartment locked up. Hadn’t sold my stuff because my stepmother had made out a check to cover rent through next month.
I’d have to pay her back, maybe even thank her for that. If I ever talked to her again.
But what really sent me back toward the city, more than the threat of snow, more than the restlessness, was magic. Even though there was no magic here at Nola’s, I still carried a small magic within me. Except it wasn’t small anymore. At night it shifted within me, slow and gentle, stretching, stroking, growing. I felt pregnant with it, heavy with it, but unlike what I imagined carrying a child was like, magic filled my whole body: my bones, my muscles, my organs, my skin. I could smell it. Taste it. See it. Hear it.
It made me ache in a strange and pleasant way, like a hunger I could not sate.
And somehow I knew the answer to that hunger was in the city.
Nola drove me to the train, stood in the icy rain, and held me tightly. “Be careful. I’ll call you when I get the new phone ins
talled. Then I expect you to call me every day.”
“I’ll try,” I said. We’d come up with a new plan of me calling and telling her about my day. Sort of a backup to my little book and the computer at home. “If you ever want to get out of the dark ages and maybe actually buy a computer, I’ll send you e-mail too.”
Nola rubbed my back one last time, then let me go. “I’ll think about it. Good luck, honey. I’ll see you soon.” She climbed back into the truck with Jupe.
I picked up the new backpack she had given me and the duffel that had some extra clothes I’d bought, my knitting stuff, and Zayvion’s letter in it. I wore a warm, knee-length coat I’d bought in town, and the gloves and scarf Nola knitted. I wasn’t so much trying to hide my marks as just trying to stay warm against the bitter cold.
I got on the train and waved to Nola and Jupe. It was time to try to make my real life my real life again. To do that, there were a couple of people I needed to see. And one of those people lived in St. John’s.
In my old life—the life I remembered—things had a way of going wrong a lot.
It looked like my new life was going to be a lot like my old life.
I stood just inside the doorway of my apartment, and could not force myself to take one more step.
What my landlord had been reticent in telling me over the phone was that my apartment had been ransacked. My living room looked like it had been hit by a hammer-happy demolition crew. Everything was ruined.
He hadn’t reported it to the police, which was no big surprise. The surprise was that there was another smell in my room more powerful than the stink of old magic. I had smelled it before—iron and minerals, like old vitamins—but I couldn’t remember who or what smelled like that. I broke out in a cold, terrified sweat. Who or whatever belonged to that smell had scared the crap out of me. Were they, or it, here? Had they or it recently been here? I didn’t hear anyone in the apartment. I didn’t sense anyone in the apartment.