“What kind of crazy . . .” Timber says, half under his breath.
“Is that true?” Briar asks me.
“Fawna says it is,” I tell her.
“I’m feeling very uncomfortable.” Kenji slowly scoots back from the table.
“Do you want to go back to Brooklyn yet?” my mom asks.
Kenji looks from Mom to Flora to Briar, then he hesitates.
“What about you?” Mom asks Timber.
His eyes rest on me and he doesn’t answer.
“Can you leave these girls?” Flora asks.
“Do they have to willingly leave in order for us to break the elf circle spell?” I ask, starting to catch on. “What if they say no?”
My mom nods at me. Now I understand. I turn to Timber. “I cast a spell on Dawn in the club. She’s an elf, too. A dark elf, which is bad, and she was going to zap us. And in the woods, I froze them stiff so they couldn’t chase us,” I admit, but as I say it my eyes fill with tears because I know exposing myself will push Timber away. “And I zapped you once, too. In the van. Remember when your ears clogged up? That was me.”
His face clouds over and he looks perplexed, as if he can’t decide if I’m being serious, and if I am, if he wants to be near me anymore.
“Did you ever cast a spell on me?” Kenji asks Briar.
She hangs her head. “Just the one,” she says, chagrined.
“So?” Mom asks. “Do you guys want to stay?”
Timber’s jaw is set and his eyes are cold, hard blue disks. “I’d like to go home now.”
I bury my head in my arms and try to swallow the sobs I feel coming.
“Kenji?” Flora asks.
“I don’t know,” Kenji says.
“What’s going to happen to them?” Briar asks.
“We’ll take them back to Ironweed,” Mom says. “And take away their memories from here.”
“Come on, man,” Timber says, pushing away from the table. “This place is nuts.”
Kenji looks torn, turning from Timber to Briar, back to Timber.
“She’s not like you,” Flora says and dips her finger into the little puddle on the table. Then she flicks the water, turning the droplets into tiny pebbles, which rain down on the table with a soft clatter.
Kenji jumps back from the table. “I’m ready to get out of here.”
Briar runs from the room wailing.
“It’s time,” my mother says. She pulls her cloak hood over her head.
Kenji and Timber stand at the trail head, awkward and unhappy in their own clothes, which have been washed and dried for them.
“I know it’s hard.” Flora hugs Briar tightly on Grandma’s front porch later that morning.
“You’re ruining my life!” Briar yells at her mother and struggles away.
Flora steps back and crosses her arms. “Oh, my love. I’m so sorry it hurts you, but this is what has to happen.”
“Come,” Mom says, so Briar and I reluctantly follow.
Dad and Grove come with us, too. We all carry our walking sticks with our bow and arrows slung over our backs. We move quickly and quietly through the forest, keeping our eyes and ears open for Clay and Dawn. The search parties were out all night scanning the woods, but no one found a trace of them anywhere.
“You’re sure they won’t remember any of this?” I whisper to my mom.
“Nothing except coming to Ironweed to look for you,” she says.
“But what about what he saw in Brooklyn?” I ask. “Like when I zapped Dawn?”
“I don’t know, honey,” she says. “Erdlers have a way of integrating weird occurrences so they seem logical. I think the idea of magic is very scary to them, so they explain those things away.”
“Like when he thought Dawn was drunk when I gave her the limp fish hex?” I ask.
She nods. “Like that.”
I sigh as I watch Timber walking. “Now I know more about him than he knows about himself, but he’ll never be able to truly know me.”
Mom puts her arm around my shoulders. “I’m afraid that’s right.”
All of this seems horribly unfair, but the funny thing is, it doesn’t change how I feel about Timber. Werewolf or not, I love the essence of who he is. I can only hope that’s the way he feels about me, spell or no spell.
I hurry up to where he plods through the snow. He looks over his shoulder at me with those cold blue eyes, and my chest aches as if someone has dunked my heart into freezing water. I want so badly to reach out and weave my fingers into his, because this might be the last time I ever get to hold his hand, but I know that I can’t. Instead, I hold my walking stick out to him. “Here,” I say. “This will help.”
Reluctantly, he takes it from me. As our hands brush against each other, I wish there was something I could say to make him understand that I really do care about him and that when I said I loved him, it was true. “Timber, I . . .”
“Don’t,” he growls at me.
I stumble back on the path and let him walk ahead. My mom catches me in her arms and huddles me close to her side as I walk through the quiet forest with tears streaming down my cheeks.
In Ironweed, Briar and I take Kenji and Timber into the bait shop as planned. We order them ham and eggs even though no one’s hungry. We wait in awkward silence until their food comes. Then my mom and dad come in while Grove keeps watch outside. Dad chats with the guy behind the counter, asking him for advice on deer rifles. When Mom walks back to our table, Dad zaps the man with a paralyzing spell, then he reaches over, turns the OPEN sign to CLOSED, and locks the door. Briar and I stand up and join hands with Mom. We whisper the reversal chant, circling Kenji and Timber, who stare at us, worried but strangely trusting. “Sha we no, dally per, um vaden sim la folly. For shaden bing um fladen fling, um vaden sim la folly.”
Like the other times I’ve been in an elf circle, I lose my sense of time and place, but this time my heart remains heavy. We chant and chant and chant until my mom tugs on our hands. I open my eyes to see Kenji and Timber slack-jawed and frozen, eyes wide but unseeing as we back out of the bait shop slowly and quietly. When we’re on the porch, Dad brings the man back to his senses. “Thanks for the advice,” he says. “I’ll be back if I want to buy a gun.” We all slip off the porch and around the back of the shop, where we disappear among the trees to where Grove has been keeping watch.
We wait. Ten minutes later, Kenji and Timber walk into the lightly falling snow. Timber messes with his phone. “I think my battery died,” he says.
“This was such a stupid idea,” Kenji says as they head down the street away from us.
“It was your idea to try to find them.” Timber pockets his phone.
“My idea?” Kenji says. “I don’t think so.” We watch them walking, leaving footprints in the snow to their car parked across the street. “You just had to see her.”
“What was that all about?” Timber asks with a snort.
“I don’t know, bro. You’re whipped.”
A little stab goes through my chest. Now that the spell has been reversed, I know that Timber’s feelings for me have changed, but I won’t know where we stand until I get back to Brooklyn. If I get back. But as Kenji brushes snow from the windshield, Timber leans against the roof of the car and takes in a deep breath. “Yeah,” he says. “She’s pretty awesome.”
My heart swells and I hug my walking stick to my chest because that’s the last thing he touched.
Then he fishes the keys out of his pocket and I hear him say, “But I’m not going to drive all over the country trying to find her.”
I nearly laugh at the folly of it all.
“Yeah,” says Kenji as he opens his door. “This place gives me the creeps. Let’s get back to New York.”
Timber climbs into the car. Before he shuts his door, he says, “My mom is going to kill me.”
chapter 22
THE MOON WILL rise early tonight, and long before the sun begins to set, we see its faint outline peeking
through the branches of snow-covered pines. Usually we would be getting ready for a three-day solstice celebration, one of the biggest festivals of the year. Instead, when we get back from Ironweed, everyone is tense and glum. For one thing, there’s still been no sign of Clay and Dawn, despite the fact that search parties have continued combing the woods and standing guard outside each settlement. I’m beginning to feel like I made them up because I’m the only one who’s ever seen their dark elves side in action (except for Timber, and we wiped away his memory, so that’s no help). For another thing, the fox has been fighting off a fever, so we have to get her to Mama Ivy as soon as possible.
I curl in a chair by the fire to pout because everything seems 100 percent sucky right now, but as usual, my mom and dad have something up their sleeves. “Come on,” Mom says, bustling into the kitchen and pulling me out of the chair. “Bundle up and pack a bag. We’re heading out.”
“Are we going back to Brooklyn?” I ask, shocked.
Mom levels her gaze at me. “Are you seriously asking me that?”
“Right,” I say. “Didn’t think so.”
Poppy tears through the room and zips up the stairs, yelling, “We’re going to Grandma Ivy’s! We’re going to Grandma Ivy’s!”
“Is that true?” I ask.
“We’re taking this show on the road,” Dad says as he sweeps through the kitchen.
“Is everybody coming?” I ask.
Mom nods. “An exodus,” she says. “Now go help the little ones pack.”
“We haven’t done this in so long!” I say happily from the trail among my entire extended family.
We look like one long weirdo parade in our long, hooded cloaks, our walking sticks, and our soft boots that make no sound on the freshly fallen snow. We’re each carrying a rucksack filled with clothes or food, plus small gifts for our faraway family. In the back of our long line, Grove and three of my cousins pull a sled with the fox, wrapped in blankets and cloaks. My mother walks beside her, chattering away as if the fox understands everything she says.
The hike is ten miles, so the little ones take turns riding on long sleds that we pull, or we carry them on our shoulders. Sometimes they scurry around, picking up sticks and rocks, antlers and bones, or other treasures they find scattered on the forest floor. As I watch my little sisters and brother and all my younger cousins playing, singing, laughing, zapping one another with harmless spells, I miss being a little kid when I never had to worry about things like, Is my erdler boyfriend really a werewolf, and did I just cause my entire world to collapse by leading dark elves to Alverland? No pressure here. Just an ordinary teenage life.
Good granite, life is rough sometimes. Except for now, when despite all the problems swirling like a blizzard around me, I’m happy to be on our way to the solstice celebration.
We come out of the woods into Mama Ivy’s clearing just as the sun fades to pink above the pine trees. I grab Willow’s hand. “I forgot how beautiful this place is,” I say.
We stand on the crest of a small hill. Ivy’s house sits in a hollow that is filled with wildf lowers in the spring. Now the hill makes the perfect sledding slope for the little ones, who climb up and swish down on their birch bark toboggans. Below, wisps of gray smoke swirl out of Ivy’s stone chimney. Her house is an old-style Alverland house, one of the earliest built by our first mother, Aster. It’s made of logs, stuffed with moss, and covered by a thick thatched roof. Behind it is the gathering place, much like Fawna’s, with tree stump chairs, long tables filled with food, a cooking pit, and a small platform decorated for the coming solstice performances.
“This will be yours soon,” I say to Willow.
She bites her lip. “I can’t imagine it yet.”
“But aren’t you excited?” I ask.
“Sort of, but I don’t know. It’s sad, too, because that means Ivy is going to pass.”
“Right,” I say quietly. “That part is weird.”
“And,” Willow says. “I feel too young for all this. It’s a lot of responsibility.”
“But it’s not like you’ll be the matriarch,” I point out. “Grandma Hortense will still be in charge. You’ll just have this amazing house!”
“But I’ll be so far away from Mom and Grandma Fawna . . .” Willow shakes her head. I’d never thought that she might be scared about her new life.
I squeeze her hand in mine. “You and Ash will be great together.”
When I mention Ash, she smiles. “It’s funny, when I’m with him I feel like I can do anything. Like he complements me, you know? What I’m bad at, he’s good at.”
I sigh, wondering if Timber and I will still be together when I get back to Brooklyn. If I get back to Brooklyn. Everything in my life feels uncertain right now, and I don’t dare ask my mom and dad when, or if, we’re going back.
“Come on,” Willow says. “Let’s go help unpack.”
That night, after we feast, the women gather in the center of a circle of torches in Mama Ivy’s clearing. In the center of our circle, on a stump, is the fox, looking more alert now, but still shivering from the fever. And sitting by the stump in a chair is Mama Ivy. She is shrunken down after nearly two hundred years of living, but her eyes still twinkle and her cheeks radiate a light that rivals the moon.
“It will take all of our magic,” Mama Ivy tells us, “to bring Iris back—if this is, in fact, Iris. But if we’re wrong . . .” She hangs her head. “I’m afraid this fine fox will perish under the power.”
“You mean she’ll die?” Briar asks, her hand pressed against her lips.
Mama Ivy nods. Everyone is quiet for a moment, but of course, we all know what we have to do. A fox is a fox, but if this fox is Aunt Iris, we have to bring her back.
“Gather,” Mama Ivy says.
Everyone moves forward and links hands. This is the first time Briar and I have been allowed to join a group spell, and despite the circumstances I’m kind of excited. I squeeze Briar’s hand and she squeezes mine back. Grandma Fawna brings over a small blue bottle of potion that’s been cooking down for the past two days. My mom turns the fox onto her back. As first she struggles, but Mom strokes her belly and whispers in its ear a language I don’t understand. The fox relaxes.
Fawna moves around the circle, dabbing potion into the center of each of our foreheads, where our totem animals reside. I don’t know yet what my totem will be. It’s a journey I have to take when my magic’s strong enough, but it’s inside of me waiting, just like Timber’s wolf is deep inside of him. Next Fawna takes the potion to my mother, who dabs it on Mama Ivy’s forehead, then her own, then she rubs it on the fox’s belly.
Mama Ivy begins the chant, “Sham, sham quin quin. La dor mi vin. Sham, sham du forse di tee shu.” She looks up to us and we all join in as we’re able.
I close my eyes and say the words, allowing my consciousness to be lost in the flow of the strange language. Each syllable travels up from our mouths into the night sky, carried away on the wings of owls to circle the moon. As we chant, a vision of Aunt Iris forms inside my mind. I see her standing before me, faint at first, and then more clearly. The chanting grows louder, more intense, and the image in my mind becomes more vibrant. I see Iris now, strong and healthy with dancing eyes and glowing skin.
I feel a deep tug in my heart for the love I have for each of my relatives. They are each a part of me and I a part of them. Without these bonds, who are we? I wonder. Nothing but a lone cougar. How did Hyacinth walk away from such love?
We chant and chant until I am lost, no longer here beneath the sky but only in the loving embrace of my family, and then we hear the yipping of the fox grow louder and morph into something deeper, fuller, more vocal. The voice of a human gasping and panting for air.
I come back into the world, to the circle, to Briar’s hand and Willow’s hand in my own. I open my eyes and see, lying on the stump in the center of the circle, Aunt Iris, naked, shivering, but alive.
Quickly, Mom and Grandma cover her with cl
oaks and blankets. The women scoop her up and carry her into the house, where they can minister her back to health.
A few hours later when the moon is in the center of the night sky, Hortense opens Mama Ivy’s door and ushers the women in. “We’re ready,” she says. “Come, come.”
The kitchen is packed with all the female relatives from several clans. Briar and I sit on the floor by the fire. At the front of the room is Mama Ivy, sitting in a rocker by the huge stone hearth. She is beautiful in the warm light of the fire, illuminating her long, white braids twisted around her head. “Come in, children. You are welcome.”
Next to Ivy is Iris, looking stronger now. I can only imagine that this house gives her strength with its open rafters hung with dried herbs, flowers, and pine boughs. The long table and soft chairs are worn from hundreds of feasts over the centuries. The ever-present smell of honey, lavender, wood smoke, and tea fills the air. This will be my sister’s soon, and now I understand what she means. It will be a lot of responsibility to keep it up so that the next generation of daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters can come here and find the same warmth by this fire someday.
The first-firsts gather behind Ivy and Iris. This includes Willow, my mother, and Fawna, plus all my great-grandmothers back to Ivy.
Ivy lifts a rough-hewn wood cup with mulled cider and says the invocation. “In the name of Aster, the first mother who settled Alverland after the great migration, and all the first daughters, we welcome you.” She sips from the cup and hands it to her oldest daughter, Hortense, who drinks, and passes it on to her oldest daughter, Apricot, then to Laurel and Jonquil, then to my great-grandmother Lily, who hands it to her daughter (my grandmother), Fawna. Mom takes it from Fawna, sips the cider, and hands it on to Willow, who takes the final drink and sets the cup back on the mantel, where it stays until the next gathering of women.
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