Legacy

by Cochran, Molly

  My cell phone rang at five in the morning. It was my dad.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Of course. I’m calling from the speakerphone in Madison’s London office.”

  Ah. That must have been why he’d forgotten the six-hour time difference between us, I thought grouchily. “Well, all right, Dad. What’s up?”

  “Honey, I have great news.”

  There was a long pause. “Are you talking to me?” I asked finally.

  “Of course!” He laughed out loud. “You’re not going to believe this, Katherine.”

  Don’t say you’re getting married, I thought fervently.

  “You’re going to join us!”

  Another pause. “Wh—what?”

  “Madison has agreed to buy you a ticket. Don’t worry about missing classes. A week here with me would be worth a semester of school. That is, if medievalism is even taught at Ainsworth.”

  “Uh . . .”

  “I’ll have to be at Cambridge for a few days, but Madison would love to take you shopping, or doing whatever women do.”

  “Um, I don’t know, Dad. I’m in the middle of a lot of things here, and—”

  “Oh, come on! Where’s your sense of spontaneity? You haven’t seen us in months.”

  “Yes. That’s why I sent you an email. I have to talk with you.”

  “About what?”

  “About changing your name. I need to know, Dad. People here—”

  “You’re spoiling everything, Katherine,” he growled. “Hold on.” Sweet-sounding talk in the background. “Fine, fine,” I heard him say before exhaling noisily into the mouthpiece. “Madison would like for you to pick up some things from her office in New York before you come.”

  “What things?”

  “What things,” he repeated.

  Mim came on the line. “A bottle of nail polish, love. Crucial Fuscial. And a couple of other things. Some pills I forgot to bring. My secretary will get everything from my apartment. Just take a bus into the city and pick them up at the front desk. I’ll give you the address.”

  “You want me to fly to London to bring you a bottle of nail polish?”

  “No,” she said with exaggerated patience, “I want you to fly to London—at my expense—to have a wonderful time. The nail polish doesn’t matter at all, really. It just would have been a nice thing for you to do.”

  “I see. Well, if it really doesn’t matter, I think I’ll pass.”

  “Why, you . . .” I could hear her fingernails scraping against the mouthpiece as she passed the phone to my father.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked wearily.

  He was bored. This wouldn’t take much longer. “Much as I’d love to see you both, Dad, I think I’d better stay at school and study. I’m having some problems with geometry.”

  “Is your GPA compromised?” he asked, clearly alarmed. “This semester is going to count in your college applications, you know.”

  “I know. I think I’ll be all right, as long as I take things seriously.” He loved that phrase: “take things seriously.”

  “All right. Got to go, Katherine. Do you need anything?”

  “No, Dad.”

  “See you later, then.” Mim was already screeching. It had no doubt been the forgotten pills that had prompted the phone call. Well, now she’d just have to do without them, and Dad might get a chance to see what she was really like.

  And I’d get to spend Christmas alone.

  I didn’t care. That would still be better than being Mim’s drug mule.

  I checked the clock on my nightstand: 5:09 a.m. Dad and Mim had gotten me so flustered that there was no way I’d be able to fall back asleep anytime soon. Great. More time to think about how Peter Shaw kissed me and then ditched me in the Meadow.

  It had been the most intimate experience I’d ever had, and I thought he was sharing every moment with me. I felt my eyes filling. I could still feel his soft lips touching me like clouds. Like moonlight.

  It hurt, knowing that Peter wouldn’t remember the moment the same way I did, but in a horrible sort of way, I was still glad it had happened. I’d taught Peter something that even Hattie hadn’t been able to, and I was proud of that. There was something I needed to do.

  At around nine in the morning, I knocked on Gram and Agnes’s door.

  “I’ve been teaching binding spells to Peter Shaw,” I declared by way of greeting.

  “We know, dear,” Gram said. “Hattie told us. Won’t you come in?”

  The invitation surprised me. “You’re not mad?”

  Agnes ushered me in. “Oh, many would say we are quite mad,” she said with a quiet chuckle. “But no, we’re not angry with you, if that was your question.”

  “We’re proud of you,” Gram said. “Using magic to help others is the whole point of living in a magical community.”

  “But you said I shouldn’t be with Peter.”

  “That’s not true,” Agnes objected. “We said that Peter would know better than to be with you.”

  I was blushing furiously. “Because of Hattie? Or you? Something one of you told him?”

  “No, dear,” Gram said.

  End of sentence. No matter how I sliced it, Peter just wasn’t that into me, and even my great-grandmother knew it. “All right,” I said with a sigh. That didn’t change anything. I’d said what I came to say. “I’ll be going now. Have a nice holiday.”

  Then I noticed the fireplace. Hanging beneath the mantel were three stockings, elaborately embroidered and decorated with appliquéd holly leaves and ivy. The one in the middle had my name on it, KATY, in big red letters. “You made me a stocking?”

  Gram smiled. “For your first Christmas.” Her voice cracked. “Except for the name. I changed that yesterday.”

  “Every year since you left Whitfield, we’ve hung it up, hoping you’d come back,” Agnes said.

  I threw my arms around them. Even Peter’s rejection didn’t hurt so much anymore.

  “Won’t you stay with us for a while?” Gram asked.

  “As long as you’ll have me,” I said.

  Hattie was right. The solstice—Yule to the witches—was a quiet time. Gram and Agnes and I went into the woods and cut down a little tree, which we decorated with real beeswax candles. We put candles in all the windows, too, and made garlands of ivy and holly to wind around the stair railings and doorways. In the evenings, we’d sit around the fire while my great-grandmother told stories or Agnes played the piano. She was very good, although she played with an almost embarrassing passion. Sometimes Gram twanged along on her dulcimer, which generally didn’t improve the music, but added a homespun touch. During the days, we’d all cook together or go walking through town. Sometimes I’d hang out with Jonathan and he’d teach me about carpentry. Or I’d walk alone through the woods. Anything to avoid running into Peter. Or thinking about him, although I didn’t manage that very well.

  It’s true what they say about time being a great healer. I wasn’t over Peter—I didn’t think I ever really would be—but the edges of the wound I felt in my heart weren’t so raw anymore. And inside that wound was still the memory of his kiss. Nothing would ever take that away. Sometimes just the thought of his touch would be enough to make me feel weak. The memory was so powerful, so immediate, that it was as if I were right back in the Meadow with him, holding him, being held.

  One day Gram, Agnes, and I went to Hattie’s to bake pies for the local nursing home. I could just imagine what that was like, an old folks’ home for witches. Miss P showed up too. Even though Miss P was a few years younger than my aunt, the two of them got along famously.

  I was stirring pastry cream in the twenty-gallon mixer when Peter came into the kitchen.

  I stopped breathing.

  “Excuse me,” he said. He was heading toward Hattie when he saw me.

  In that instant time ceased to exist. His eyes, gray and deep and full of a pain I didn’t understand, searched inside mine until t
hey found my soul. And I gave it to him, there, across the noisy, bright kitchen.

  I’m yours, it called to him.

  You’re mine, his called back. From the beginning, you were meant to be mine.

  “Peter!” Hattie shouted. “What do you want?”

  “It . . . it’s Eric,” he stammered. “I think he needs his medicine.”

  “I’ll be right up,” Hattie said, wiping her hands on her apron.

  The spell was broken. Spell? Who was I kidding? That was nothing but wishful thinking.

  I’m yours. Geez, how corny could you get? I went back to stirring my pastry cream.

  “Peter!” Hattie called again. When I looked up, a strong brown arm was snaking around the door, grabbing Peter’s shirt and yanking him out of the room.

  He was still looking at me.

  The kitchen was weirdly quiet. “What?” I snapped crankily, irritated at the nosy women who were so interested in my nonexistent love life that they’d all dropped what they were doing and stood gawking at me.

  Wishful thinking. That was all it was.

  On the night of the Winter Solstice we lit all the candles in the windows and on the tree, too. They filled the room with warm, flickering light. Sitting on an old horsehair sofa between my aunt and my great-grandmother, with no television or recorded music in the background, I felt as if I’d been transported back in time.

  “Yule teaches us a great lesson,” Gram said. “It is the darkest time of the year, with the shortest day and the longest night.”

  “Mmm,” I murmured as noncommittally as I could.

  “It means that things have gotten as bad as they can,” Agnes said. “One tick after the moment of darkest night, the light begins to grow.”

  “We call it the birth of the infant light,” the old woman said. “Another word for hope.”

  I sat up straighter. Hope, yes. No matter how bad things were, hope was possible. Maybe even with Peter. “I’ll try to remember that,” I said.

  “Very good. Now, shall we try a cone of power?” Gram asked. “And then perhaps a cup of tea?”

  “A cone of what?”

  “We’ll make a wish,” she said.

  “For power?”

  “For whatever you’d like, dear,” she said.

  “Like world peace.” That seemed like a safe bet.

  The two of them looked at one another. “Certainly, dear, if that is what you want. Or power, if—”

  “No, no,” I amended quickly. “I didn’t mean—that is, world peace would be fine.”

  “It doesn’t have to be an unselfish wish,” Agnes said.

  I was confused. “But then . . . well, it wouldn’t be good, would it?”

  “Do we always have to be good?” That sounded strange, coming from an 80-something-year-old woman.

  “Grandmother!” Agnes admonished. “She means, Katy, that it’s all right to be kind to yourself. Always doing for others is a sure path to resentment.”

  I’d never thought of things in quite that way before. Yes, I could be kind to myself, I supposed. Now, what did I want?

  Peter’s face came to mind. His beautiful face, his soft lips . . .

  No, not that. I couldn’t wish for that.

  World peace. That was safer.

  We held hands. Agnes began a sort of wordless chant, a low singing sound deep in her throat. Then Gram joined her, her own voice high and warbly, sounding a lot like Glinda, the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz. I almost laughed out loud. Then both of them squeezed my hands and I realized that they were waiting for me to chant, too.

  I panicked. What was I supposed to say? Or worse yet, sing?

  I decided just to hum. Humming for world peace was okay.

  Hmm. Hmmm.

  The air in the space between us began to vibrate, then to move in a circle like a tornado in reverse. It rose slowly off the ground, tapering to a point as it grew.

  I’ve done this, I thought. It was how I’d arranged Mim’s papers in her apartment before I’d pushed them out the window. That had been pretty juvenile, I had to admit. My thoughts at the time hadn’t exactly been on world peace.

  Which I really should have been concentrating on now. World peace. Yes.

  Only something kept getting in the way. Try as I might to see ethnically diverse hands clasping one another in friendship across an ocean, all I could really see was . . .

  Peter. Peter’s eyes, filled with the suffering of a thousand years . . . Peter . . . oh, Peter . . .

  The cone whirled, almost too strong for our arms to contain it. I felt my hair flying out behind me. My breath came in ragged gasps. Peter, my love, my true, my only love . . .

  With an audible whoosh the energy in the cone shot through the ceiling. Crap, I thought. What a time to be daydreaming. “World Pete!” I shouted. “I mean peach! That is . . .”

  Agnes held up her hand for me to be quiet. I hung my head.

  Afterward, everything was still. “What were you saying, Katy?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “Peace,” I whispered. I knew I’d probably blown the whole spell. “I ruined it, didn’t I,” I said.

  Gram straightened her doily, which had gone askew during the proceedings and now hung over one eye. “No one ever knows if a spell will work or not,” she said. “We just send out our intentions, and hope for the best.”

  I felt bad. Even my intentions had gotten screwed up. There would be no world peace now, thanks to me.

  “What did you wish for, dear?” she asked Agnes.

  “That’s no one’s business but mine.”

  “That means it was about Jonathan,” Gram said with a wicked grin. “Although you needn’t waste a spell on that. Anyone can see he couldn’t be more crazy about you.”

  “I know nothing of the kind,” Agnes said, walking away. Her hair had fallen out of its usual neat chignon and hung in pretty tendrils around her face. She was fanning herself with the electric bill as she left the room.

  “The Ainsworth women are famous for their love spells,” Gram said. “We are artists in the field.”

  “Is . . . is that what you wished for, then?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to hear the answer.

  “Me? Oh, good heavens, no. I wished that blasted Wonderland didn’t get built on the Meadow. I wished hard, too.”

  “The Meadow?” I asked, shocked. “Is that where it’s supposed to be built?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “But . . . but . . .”

  “It doesn’t bear thinking about,” she said, closing her eyes to the prospect. “Although I’ve heard they’re very close to an agreement with Jeremiah Shaw.”

  “Who?”

  “Naturally, a cowen Shaw would own the deed.”

  “He owns no such thing,” Agnes said, coming back into the room with three glasses of apple cider and a plate of sandwiches. “Everyone knows that the Meadow has been public land since Whitfield was founded.”

  “Nevertheless, the Shaws have paid the taxes on it.” The old woman shook her head. “We always said it was a waste of money, paying taxes on property they didn’t own. We never thought that even a Shaw would try to sell it.”

  “Or buy it,” Agnes added. “Only something as soulless as the Wonderland Corporation would even think of disregarding the Meadow’s magic.”

  “Madam Mim,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “The soulless something at the heart of Wonderland,” I said. “My father’s girlfriend.”

  No one spoke for a while. Finally Gram said, “Well, maybe the negotiations won’t go through. The Meadow has strong magic.”

  Aunt Agnes took my stocking from its place over the fireplace and brought it to me. “I don’t know,” she said. “There are some forces even magic can’t stop, and Wonderland may be one of them.”

  We exchanged gifts. I gave Agnes some tortoiseshell hair combs that I’d bought in an antique store with my earnings from Hattie’s. For Gram, I had a big box of English to
ffees I’d made at night while she was asleep. I’d cooked them using sugar and butter and vanilla, then cooled them and cut them and coated them with the best dark chocolate I could find. Then I’d put them in a pretty box that I covered with handmade paper and silk ribbon. I think she liked them.

  In my stocking were two treasures. From Agnes, a handwritten book of spells on a level I’d never known about before.

  “Time travel?” I asked, reading through the table of contents.

  “Very advanced,” Agnes said gravely. “You won’t be able to perform any of these for years, but they’re worth looking at, all the same.”

  “Thank you,” I said. And I meant it.

  I loved Whitfield.

  My great-grandmother gave me a brooch that had belonged to Serenity Ainsworth. It was a carved ivory cameo on a background of reddish stone.

  “Carnelian,” Gram said. “It is the stone of warriors, for that was what Serenity was, in her own way. She was not cowed by adversity, nor influenced by the opinions of others. She was your namesake, and I hope that you make of your life as much as she made of hers.”

  “Thank . . .” I was having a hard time pulling off the thick plastic that encased it.

  “I had it shrink wrapped,” Agnes added. “We know about your psychometric abilities. That was why we changed all the furniture in your mother’s room. You may not be ready to explore Serenity’s inner being so late in the evening.”

  “Oh. Yes,” I said, “that was thoughtful. I’ll choose the right time to . . . explore.”

  By then, the fire was dimming to embers, and the candles were guttering. Agnes passed around the glasses of cider she’d brought in, then raised her own glass in a toast.

  “To world peach,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  •

  FIFTEEN

  IMBOLC

  The next big witch holiday was Imbolc, a.k.a. Groundhog Day. I know, you wouldn’t think that Groundhog Day was a cause for celebration, but in the magical community, it is a huge deal.

  Back in the day, before the birth of Punxsutawney Phil, the men of the village would gather together on February second to take someone’s pet snake and put it in a hole in the ground. Then they’d hang around chewing the fat and drinking tankards of ale until the snake came out again.