Legacy

by Cochran, Molly

  “Song,” Gram said. “The ‘Song of Unmaking’. It has to be sung.”

  “It’s very obscure.”

  “Well, what does it say?”

  She cocked her head, thinking. “Let’s see . . .”

  Through Love’s unbreaking tie

  Unmake the Darkness, do not die

  No death shall come, good soul, to thee,

  For by the Sacred Fire set thou free.

  “At one time I could recite the whole spell,” she said. “Anyway, no one knows why she even wrote it, since the solution—burning—is what we’d been doing for millennia.”

  “But . . . the sacred fire. Maybe that’s different.”

  She shrugged. “Some scholars have conjectured that Ola’ea was writing from a Christian perspective, seeing physical death as the pathway to eternal life, although . . .”

  “Agnes, I think Hattie needs our help rather urgently,” Gram interrupted.

  “Ah, yes. And Peter, too, I imagine?”

  “Under the circumstances, most certainly.”

  “What about Peter?” I asked.

  “Leave things to me.” Agnes stood up and walked over to a high-backed velvet wing chair in a darkened corner.

  “Er . . .” Gram rose. “Perhaps I should give Katy our gift now.”

  “That would be prudent,” Agnes said, gathering her skirts around her and sitting down. She templed her index fingers and brought them between her eyebrows. I wondered if she had a headache.

  Then one of the oddest things I’d ever seen happened in front of my eyes. In the silent room I heard a low buzz begin to emanate from the corner where Agnes was sitting. Then she began to fade out, as if she were an electronically produced image with static interrupting the transmission.

  Gram must have seen me gawking. “Agnes has an unusual talent,” she said, pitching her voice low so as not to disturb her granddaughter, who was now blinking in and out of sight. “She is an astral traveler. She can journey long distances without the aid of vehicles . . . or even legs.” She chuckled at her little joke.

  My eyes were transfixed on the wing chair, which was now empty. “You mean she’s . . . she’s just gone?”

  “Not exactly. That is, her subtle body is still in the chair. Try not to sit on it.”

  I swallowed. “Does she . . . does she do this often?”

  “Oh my, yes. Every day, in fact, when she goes to work.”

  “Aunt Agnes works?”

  “Why, of course, dear. The Ainsworths have never been layabouts. Even I do my part by volunteering at the hospital.” She straightened her shoulders. “And I’m eighty-three.”

  “No, I didn’t mean . . . Er, what does she do? In her job, I mean.”

  “She teaches ethnobotany at Stanford University,” she said proudly.

  “Stanford?” I was stunned. “In California?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter how far away the destination is,” Gram said. “It’s a much more efficient method than travel by broomstick, wouldn’t you say?” She started to laugh, but then held up a finger. “Shhh.” She squinted for a moment, as if listening to something. “Ah, yes. Agnes is with Penelope Bean now,” she said.

  “Miss P? How do you know?”

  “She’s sending me a message.”

  I blinked. “A message? You mean a telepathic message?”

  “Very minor talent,” she said, blushing. “Receiving messages. Anyone can do it, really, with a little study.”

  “Why is Agnes with Miss P?”

  “I have no idea,” she said. “But that’s what she’s telling me. Hmm.” She nodded decisively. “Righto, I almost forgot.” She walked over to a little table and opened the central drawer in it. “There’s something else she wants me to do,” she said, rummaging through the drawer. “It concerns you. Ah, yes, here it is.” She pulled out a stick.

  That’s what it was, a wooden stick about ten inches long. “This is for you,” she said, handing it to me with a flourish. “A birthday gift from Agnes and me.”

  “Um . . . thanks,” I said dubiously. “Is it a hair ornament?”

  Her eyes widened in horror. “Good gracious, child, how did you manage all those years? It’s a wand, Katy.”

  “A wand? A magic wand?” Images of Hogwarts came to mind. “Terrificus Splenderosa,” I said, twirling the stick. Nothing happened.

  Gram clucked. “How disrespectful!” she muttered. “A wand is not a toy. In fact, it would be quite premature for you to have one at all, if it weren’t for these extraordinary circumstances. Needless to say it should only be used in case of dire emergency.”

  I examined the tip. Plain wood. “Is there a phoenix feather inside?” I asked, shaking it.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just rowan wood, since your birthday occurs in August, the Druidic month represented by the rowan tree.”

  “How does it work?”

  “The way all magic works,” she said, snatching the wand out of my hand. “In fact, it does nothing on its own. All a wand does is to focus your intention, which is what creates magic in the first place.” She pointed it at one of the Beans’ family portraits hanging on the wall, a prune-faced old woman wearing a blue satin gown and a three-foot-tall white wig. “Know what effect you wish to achieve, and focus all your attention and will on it.” As she spoke, the sour-looking woman in the portrait produced a wide, gap-toothed grin and crossed her eyes.

  “That’s wonderful!” I exclaimed, running up to the painting. As I drew closer, though, the woman’s expression returned to its former haughty somberness.

  “Minor, minor,” Gram said. “Anyone can create an illusion.” She handed the wand back to me. “Not a bad wand, though.”

  “Thank you,” I said, stroking the thing with my finger.

  “Just make sure that what you focus on is what you really want, and not what you think you ought to want.”

  “World peach,” I said, remembering the first time I attempted magic.

  “Precisely. Be very clear in your mind. Then, once you are clear, you may use the wand. But be careful with it. I cannot stress that enough. So much can go wrong.”

  I toyed with it awkwardly. It’s hard to be casual about wielding a magic wand.

  “You’ll have to sew a wand pocket into your clothes,” Gram said. “Meanwhile, just keep it in your sleeve.” She showed me how to press it between my shoulder and my elbow. Now I understood why I’d never seen witches wearing tank tops.

  I twirled the wand between my fingers. “How can I use this to see Peter?” I asked. I knew I was grasping at straws, but I couldn’t help myself. “Or at least communicate with him?”

  Gram put her hands on her hips, annoyed. “You can’t,” she said. “You can only do what you would normally do, only more so. In the instance you’re describing, that would mean more of nothing.”

  “Just asking,” I said, replacing the wand in my sleeve. I didn’t mean to seem ungrateful or rude, but I was hoping that something . . . anything . . . would help me get to him. I needed to know that he was all right. And if he wasn’t . . . Well, I couldn’t think about that. He would be fine. He would have to be.

  And I needed to see him. More than I wanted to take my next breath, I wanted to be with him.

  “Oh, here you go.” Gram cocked her head to the side. “Were you thinking about Peter?”

  My jaw dropped. “How . . . how . . .”

  She burst out laughing. “That wasn’t telepathy, just observation,” she said, holding her sides. “When are you not thinking about him?” She waved her handkerchief, guffawing.

  “Very hilarious,” I said.

  “What was telepathy, however, was Agnes’ message to me. Peter is fine.”

  “Huh?”

  “Agnes is with him now. She says he’s weak, but out of all danger. They’ve given him two pints of blood already.”

  “Have her tell him that I’m here. That I—”

  “Yes, yes. She knows, dear.” She straightened up, her ey
es clear. “The wheels are in motion,” she said.

  “What wheels?”

  “The wheels of fate,” she said ominously. “From now on we’re all just going to have to do what we have to do.”

  “What’s that mean?” I demanded, alarmed. “No one’s going to get burned, right? Nothing like that.”

  “I truly hope not, dear. But one never knows what one will be called upon to endure.”

  “No. Wait. That can’t be an option. We have to think—”

  “We’d best get your things from New Town and bring them back here while we have the chance,” she said. “Come along, Katy. I’ll drive you.”

  Gram’s car was a dove gray 1956 four-door Cadillac Sedan de Ville with butter soft burgundy leather seats and enough chrome to coat New Jersey.

  “Goodness me, I hope I can remember how to operate this,” she said as the Caddy lurched out of the garage. “Agnes drove it here.”

  “How long has it been since you’ve driven?” I asked.

  “Oh, it wasn’t that long ago,” she said. “1985, I think.” The mailman eyed us warily as we approached. “Yes, that was it. I recall it was the festival of Mabon . . .”

  We came so close to the mailman that his buttons scraped against the passenger side window. He uttered a little shriek as we passed.

  “Er . . . I think you’re hitting that guy, Gram,” I pointed out.

  “Hattie and I were baking bread for the festival . . . Good heavens! What on earth is he doing there?” She lay on the horn. After we sailed past him, I watched through the side view mirror as he sat down on the curb, the contents of his mailbag scattered around him.

  That was just the beginning. The drive to Mim’s house on Oak Street was the longest three miles I’ve ever traveled. Apparently Gram had learned to drive at the local amusement park’s Dodge ’Em Cars pavilion. She would floor the gas pedal to drive fifty feet, only to slam on the brake at the next stop sign. Then she would gun the engine again, even if there was a car in front of her. By the time we got to Mim’s, the odor of burnt rubber lay thick around the car. The beautiful whitewall tires were still smoking as I let myself in the house.

  My dad had already moved out. Not that you could see any difference on the ground floor—that was still as sterile and unlived-in as ever—but the little room he’d used as his office had been cleared out. On a bookshelf, along with some scraps of paper and a rubber band, was a small framed photograph of Dad and Mim standing in front of Big Ben in London. It must have been windy that day, because Mim’s blonde hair was blowing around her face. It made her look kind of like an angel, surrounded by a nimbus of golden light. Dad looked happy, too.

  Looking at the picture, I felt a wave of sadness and guilt. I remembered that trip. Dad had called me, boring me with facts about Westminster Abbey or something. Mim had invited me to join them, on condition that I bring along her nail polish. I’d refused.

  I’d begrudged them their happiness together because they hadn’t included me, even though I hadn’t wanted to be with them in the first place. And now their time was over, I wished I’d been less of a pain to them. I wished I’d given them more of a chance to enjoy each other while they could.

  I packed up my few possessions pretty quickly, putting the London photo in the bag with my laptop, phone, and iPod, which Dad had left for me in my room. There was something else there too. Beside my electronics was an 1898 edition of Beowulf, translated by William Morris. Inside it was a slip of paper with a message from Dad. Dear Katy, it read, I’m sorry I missed your birthday.

  The book had been one of my father’s most prized possessions. He wouldn’t have parted with it for anything or anybody.

  Except me.

  Tenderly I placed it in my bag. Then, on a loose piece of paper, I wrote a quick note to Mim. It said, Thank you—IOU Big time. I signed it with the smiley emoticon. . I figured that was about as sentimental a gesture as she could stand.

  CHAPTER

  •

  THIRTY-FIVE

  TERRA

  It was twilight, and the stark shadows made the buildings around the square look ominous with a surreal, comic-book feel as we drove back into Old Town.

  Gram’s driving had not improved perceptibly since we’d left the Bean house. She continued to jackrabbit from stop sign to traffic light, terrorizing passersby as we went. As we bulleted past the school, I was starting to relax a little. I hadn’t really believed we would make it back without an accident, and our safety was an unexpected surprise.

  That good feeling lasted about ten seconds. Then, with no warning at all, my great-grandmother screeched to a halt in the middle of the street. Since cars made in 1956 didn’t come equipped with seat belts, I would have crashed through the windshield if I hadn’t thrown my hands, palms out, in front of me.

  “Merciful Athena,” she hushed, gazing upward.

  I followed her line of sight to the easternmost corner of the school, the science wing, which seemed to be weaving. Before Gram could shut off the engine, I was out of the car. I felt a faint vibration under my feet. That was all it was, nothing like an earthquake or anything, just a vague buzz radiating out from the ground near the school.

  And then, in another second, it seemed, the earth just opened up and the whole corner of the building started to tumble into the rapidly expanding hole.

  “Katy!” I heard Gram scream from inside the car. It was Sunday, so there weren’t many people on the street—only me and Gram in her car and, unfortunately, a family of six who’d just turned the corner onto Front Street. They were all dressed up and talking excitedly to one another. I doubt if they felt the ground or, a moment later, saw the cascade of falling bricks heading straight for them.

  “The wand!” Gram shrieked.

  Looking back, this whole incident probably took less than three seconds, but at the time, it felt as if everything were happening in slow motion, as if I were running through melted marshmallows.

  With what seemed to me like frustrating slowness I pulled the rowan wand out of my sleeve and flicked it toward the falling building, shouting, “Stop!” and willing them to halt in midair. I can honestly say that for that moment, every cell in my brain, every muscle in my body, and every molecule of blood in my veins was focused entirely on those falling bricks, willing them to defy gravity.

  It didn’t work, of course, at least not perfectly. The building continued to tumble, along with a lot of broken glass, wood, books, metal plumbing, and several stone tabletops from the crumbling chemistry lab. But—and this is a big but, since I may not have been perceiving things correctly—they seemed to be falling a lot more slowly than they had been.

  At any rate my scream at least alerted the people who’d been walking in the path of the descending rubble. To their great good fortune, they were witches. As soon as they looked up and saw the building coming down, all six of them automatically threw out five fingers while simultaneously ducking out of the way.

  From my vantage point the bricks, falling slowly as flower petals on a gentle breeze, changed their trajectory slightly and curved away from the six pedestrians, who were scrambling for shelter like frantic mice. That was the thing: They were moving fast, but the bricks were falling very, very slowly. That’s what didn’t make sense, in the context of what happened next.

  After the bricks and assorted debris had all hit the ground in a deafening cloud that surrounded the gaping sinkhole, the people who’d been walking by the school came out of their hiding places under the trees and park benches on the other side of the street. There were two adults and four girls in the group, all of them looking pale and shaky. As I ran up to them to ask if they were all right, I recognized one of the girls.

  Becca Fowler. She and all the other females in the group were dressed in what were either floor-length gowns or something like wizards’ robes. They were probably on their way to the Meadow, so that Mrs. Fowler could get things ready for the Lammas festival.

  “Everyone okay here
?” I called out, waving to them.

  Becca was brushing furiously at a grass stain on her long skirt. “I’ll see that you go to prison for this!” Mrs. Fowler spat, quivering in her long gown like a custard.

  “What?” I was stunned. “The building was—”

  “You destroyed your own school for the sake of some . . . some joke!”

  “Joke? No. No, ma’am,” I said. “There was a sinkhole. You and your family turned the corner just as—”

  “I saw her,” Becca chimed in. “She used a wand.”

  There was a murmur. I looked around. People who lived on the square were starting to come out of their houses to peer at the wreckage on the street.

  Mrs. Fowler pointed at me, wild-eyed. “She tried to kill us!” she shouted.

  More murmuring.

  “Now, wait a second,” I said. “How can you possibly say—”

  “She used a wand to make the building fall as we were walking by.”

  “That’s not true! I was trying to stop it.”

  “Well, you weren’t very successful, were you?” Mrs. Fowler narrowed her eyes. “You probably stole the wand in the first place.”

  “I did not!”

  “Children do not own or use wands!” she insisted.

  “I think she did all right,” an old man in the crowd said. “There was a sinkhole, that’s for sure. I watched it open up.”

  “Right. She slowed the fall of the building with that wand,” someone else added.

  “Good use of magic, if you ask me.”

  “Oh, really?” Livia Fowler’s face was an ugly mask now, her thin red lips forming sharp lines. “Do you know who she is?”

  Murmuring speculation. “Cowen” seemed to come up a lot. So did “Agatha Ainsworth” and “crazy”. But naturally, Mrs. Fowler answered her own question. “She is the evil spawn of an evil mother, and possessed of an evil spirit!” she roared, her stentorian voice cutting through all the other sounds on the street.

  “Hey, she’s the one sent that fireball on Samhain, wasn’t she?”

  “She most certainly was!” chimed Becca.

  “That wasn’t me,” I said, trying to defend myself, although I doubt if anyone could hear me above all the talk circulating through the crowd.