“We have four here, Mama,” Merry said. “If you’re counting only us. Not three.”
“You’re so smart, Merry! Let’s try again.” Then, staring at the pot, recited the words, “With this salve you’ll weigh five pounds, not one ounce more, when I invoke the power of four!”
This time there was a pop in the middle of the mixture that shot up like lava from a science fair volcano. The girls grinned at one another.
“Let’s get going,” said Miss Sasha, donning a navy coat, knee high boots, and a felt beret. The sisters pulled on their winter clothes and marched up the stairs. Just as Sasha predicted, the tree itself was light enough to pick up, though it was weighted down by the heavy pot.
“See,” Merry whispered to Ruth Anne and Maggie. “Mama really can do magick.”
“We don’t know how much the tree weighed before,” Maggie argued.
“Good point,” Ruth Anne agreed, though Merry detected a note of awe in her their voices.
THE MADDOCK GIRLS made their way into the forest. Miss Sasha carried a short shovel in one hand and the top end of the tree in the other, while Ruth Anne and Maggie teamed up on the heavy bottom pot. Eve ran alongside, announcing when branches needed to be stepped over or rocks avoided. Once again, Merry walked behind, comforting Starlight, now nearly lifeless in her hands.
“We’ll get you home soon, little guy,” she said, sending warm energy into his heart center. He wasn’t moving, but she felt the dim beat of his heart beneath his wings.
“Is this it, Merry?” Miss Sasha stopped in a small clearing.
“Let me check.” Merry closed her eyes and concentrated on the earth energy around her, feeling it rise up out of the ground, ancient and majestic like the trees. “Not quite.” She sensed another vitality ahead of her, newer, charged, but also soothing. She opened her eyes and strode towards the spot. “Right here.”
Chipping the ice and dirt away with the heel of her boot, Merry found the small section of charred earth where she had removed the sapling from the ground, just days earlier. It felt like so long ago now.
Sasha nodded and they laid the tree gently onto the ground. Wordlessly, the girls took turns with the shovel and dug out a hole, large and deep enough to bury the pot. With great care they planted the tree, working together to set it upright. Ruth Anne and Miss Sasha held it in place while Maggie and Eve filled in around the edges with damp earth. After packing the ground tightly, they fortressed the stump with large rocks from the clearing.
Now in its proper place, the fir tree seemed even taller than in the sewing room. It had an air of royalty about it, like a queen before her court.
The five stood around the tree like the five points on a star, their mouths agape, wondering at the mighty life force before them.
It was the most beautiful tree Merry had ever seen.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the others. “I wanted to decorate it for Christmas. It would have been beautiful.”
“It still can be,” Eve said.
She bent down and plucked a smooth pebble from the ground and laid it across a thick lower bough. She did it again and again, adding twigs and stray acorns in the process. As Eve placed them, their colors changed, from earthy tones to vibrant metallic hues of gold and silver and copper. And though she couldn’t reach the highest branches, the forest ornaments seemed to arrange themselves so that they settled all the way to the top.
“There,” Eve said, stepping back.
“Maggie?” Miss Sasha said, beckoning her wilder daughter forth.
Maggie looked at Merry and smiled. She rarely used her gifts deliberately and Merry knew it was only for her. Maggie bent down, placing one hand firmly on the ground and the other on a branch. Closing her eyes, she inhaled into her lungs and then exhaled slowly. As the last of her breath left her body, the tree came alight, each tiny fleck of stardust edging its boughs illuminated under the Solstice moon.
“Good work, Maggie Mae,” Miss Sasha said as her daughter resumed her place in line.
“I guess I’m the Little Drummer Boy here,” Ruth Anne said, scratching her head. “I have no gift to bring.”
“Don’t be silly,” Merry said. “You’re here. That’s all that matters.” Then, looking up the apex of the tree added, “We need a topper, though.”
At Merry’s words, Starlight squirmed lightly in her hands and opened his heavy eyes.
Ruth Anne smiled crookedly. “I think you got one.”
“Mama?” Merry asked, looking to Miss Sasha for confirmation. Her mother nodded. Merry held her hands out before her in the direction of the tree. “It’s time, Starlight. I’ll always remember you, but you need to be with your tree now.”
She kissed the owl’s head and the two locked eyes. This was goodbye, she knew, and she hated goodbyes. She never read the last page of a novel because she hated to have things end.
Starlight dipped his head, as if understanding.
He then closed his eyes for the span of several heartbeats, and when he reopened them there was a light about him that Merry hadn’t seen before. It flared out of him like the prisms of a crystal. It was the light of life. The light of home.
Starlight bolstered himself to an upright position, cocked his head, and then spread his white wings. He leapt from Merry’s hands and soared upwards, spiraling around the tree with stunning grace, before landing on the highest branch. The stars above bathed him in the glow of the Milky Way.
The tree began to grow again too, stretching itself, reaching towards the heavens. Starlight looked up into the limitless sky, turning his head to see every star. From high above, he looked down on Merry, regarding her with wistful, intelligent eyes
“Starlight!” Merry called to him through cupped hands. “I’ll come visit you whenever I can.”
He was far from her now, but she knew he received her message. Words had power, even words that went unheard.
“I think this is goodbye,” Miss Sasha said, placing a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “I thought he could stay with us, but he belongs somewhere else.”
“No.” It came out as a breath, quiet and broken, and it was a selfish word she quickly recanted. If you love something, you allow it to exist, even if that existence can’t be a part of your own.
“Starlight…” she whimpered, reaching a hand out to her pet, her familiar, her friend––saying goodbye as he continued his ascension. She blew him a kiss, wondering how you could love something so much. It was a maternal love––pure and simple and without constraint. She marveled that anyone could live through the process of loving and letting go, and still remain somehow intact.
She looked up at her mother and smiled. And her mother smiled back.
A tear slid down Merry’s cheek and fell from her face. Before it hit the ground it was caught by the wind. She watched as it was carried upward by the night breeze, like a drifting snowflake. It travelled high, coming to rest on the owl’s chest.
She heard Starlight coo, even at that great distance. Or maybe she just felt it in her heart.
“We should go now,” Merry said to the others, sensing that her presence would only prolong the time he’d stay here in this world.
But as she stepped away from the tree, she felt a slight tremor beneath her feet. The others must have felt it too, for they all looked down at once.
They huddled together, staring as the base of the tree transformed into a solid ice crystal. The ice expanded, covering the tree, swallowing it from root to tip. Just as the wishing star had exploded, so too did the glass tree, sending a thousand crystalline snowflakes drifting into the heavens.
Nothing was left. Not even the owl.
“Where did Starlight go?” Merry asked, near tears.
“No one can know for sure,” Miss Sasha admitted.
Ruth Anne came to Merry, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “There’s another legend I read about in one of Uncle Joe’s books. A better one. It says that every time a star falls, it creates a new life. A
nd when that life’s cycle is complete, it becomes a star again, returning to the heavens.”
“Does it hurt?”
Ruth Anne shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“So that means…” Merry bit her trembling lip.
“Starlight is up there, watching over you.”
The five Maddock girls looked upward. Maggie squealed, pointing. “I think I see it! I think I see him!”
Merry looked at her sisters, and her mother, and the spot where the tree once stood. And she knew, with certainty that Starlight was home now.
“Mama,” Merry said tentatively. “Can we get another tree? We are in a forest, after all.”
Her mother cleared her throat. “I suppose, but let’s wait till morning. I was thinking, maybe we’ll celebrate Yule at our house.”
“What’s Yule?”
Miss Sasha took her daughters’ hands and walked them towards the path that led them back home. “Oh, Yule going to love it,” she joked. “Three days of drinking and eating and merriment. And there’s a log you get to make wishes on.”
“That sounds fun,” Merry agreed, nuzzling against her mother’s arm.
“And of course, on the 24th it’s your birthday, Miss Merry.”
“Yes. But…will we have Christmas?”
Miss Sasha stopped at the edge of the forest. “We’ve been invited over to your Aunt Dora’s house for Christmas. I’ve accepted. It’s been too long.”
The girls enfolded their mother in a circlet of hugs.
“Thank you, Mama,” Merry whispered.
Miss Sasha shook them gently loose. “What can I say? I’m a sucker for any event where I get to drink wine, wear tinsel, and shimmy in garland.”
Merry smiled. Her wishes had come true. All of them.
Overhead, she swore she saw her star twinkling from its new home. She felt comforted, knowing Starlight would be watching over her, guiding her in magick and in life.
“Mama,” she said as they reached their front door. “Why doesn’t everyone believe in magick? It seems obvious to me.”
“Because you’re still a child, Merry. Someday, you too may believe otherwise.” She paused a moment, leaning against the doorframe. “Faith is hard to come by in this world, Merry, and its tested every day. Even for people like me. But children remind us that anything is possible.”
“I won’t be a child much longer,” Merry said wistfully, watching her sisters pile into the living room and bicker over which television show to watch.
Even then, she knew that this was all temporary. She took in the scene and tucked it into her heart, where she kept all of her memories. A premonition struck her, an image of what was to come––they’d drift apart, all of them.
But not today.
She smiled at her sisters.
She had kept her share of secrets. She’d keep this one, too.
The girls went to their rooms and put on their pajamas, their imaginations filled with the excitement of the upcoming Yule party, Merry’s birthday, and Christmas at Aunt Dora’s house. Once dressed, they were called downstairs by their mother, who said it was time to cut the fruitcake and she wasn’t going to eat that monstrosity alone.
As Merry passed the sewing room, she heard a noise inside. Peering within, she spotted two items on the floor: a silver pine needle and a silky white feather.
She took them both, keeping the feather and the pine needle the rest of her days, secured in her box of treasures with her other hopes and dreams and memories.
And in times of trouble, she called upon them––the feather for wisdom and the needle for guidance.
And during those troubling times she was certain that one star in the Universe shone extra bright, glowing only for her.
A star built by love.
If you liked this book and are new to the Daughters of Dark Root series, try:
THE WITCHES OF DARK ROOT
Daughters of Dark Root Book 1
(see below for a sample!)
Prologue
MAGIC MAN
Miss Sasha’s Magick Shoppe, Dark Root, Oregon
February, 2006
The shop was cold and dimly lit, musty and confining.
A spider web had attached itself to the archway that separated the main room from the back and I ducked each time I passed beneath it, not bothering to sweep it down. Shelves lined every wall of Mother’s Magick shop, displaying the hundreds of candles, masks, figurines, and baubles that made Miss Sasha’s the most popular attraction in all of Dark Root.
While the oddities fascinated tourists, I hardly noticed them anymore as I went about my work. I hardly noticed anything anymore, except the clock that ticked down the minutes until I was released from my daily servitude.
“Excuse me,” said a woman who had been meandering near the book section for the last hour. “Where is your restroom?”
I responded by opening the front door.
She looked like she was going to protest but decided against it. My apathy for the shop was notorious. She would probably lodge a complaint with my mother instead.
“You need to order more peppermint,” my sister Eve said, emerging from the back room and sucking on a piece of candy. “We’ve been out for almost a week.”
“You order it,” I responded.
If she was going to eat the supplies, she could order them as well.
Eve launched into a series of reasons why I should perform the task––I was practically a boy and therefore, better at math, I had no social life and thus had far more time for work, etc. I was about to tell her that it wouldn’t bother me if we ran out of everything, that the whole place could implode for all I cared, when a crystal figurine on a low shelf caught my eye. It was an owl, an ugly thing with eyes that bulged and a beak that hooked. I wasn’t sure who had ordered it but I was certain it would never find a buyer.
“Bet I beat you out of this town,” I said, tapping its beak.
A losing bet, I realized. It had wings. I didn’t even have a car.
I checked the clock again––five minutes ‘til closing time––and glanced around the shop. It wasn’t as clean as my mother would have wanted, but then again my mother wasn’t here.
“I say we call it done,” I said, tossing my apron on the counter.
“Maggie, come take a look.”
Eve stood by the window. Her fingers twitched as she pointed to a man I had never seen before, seated by the window in Delilah’s Deli across the street.
“Who is he?” she asked. “I don’t recognize him.”
I moved to get a better view, nudging her out of the way. “Well, he isn’t from around here.”
Eve clucked her tongue. Of course, he wasn’t from around here. His sophisticated clothing identified him as a city person, not a man who spent much time slinking around a small town in Central Oregon.
“He’s handsome,” she said and I silently agreed. Though it was getting dark I could still make out his thick mane of wavy brown hair and the strong line of his jaw. He was leaning forward, talking to a gaunt young man who hung on his every word.
“We have to find out what he’s doing here,” Eve said. “It’s just not natural.” Though the town festered with tourists during the fall months when we held the Haunted Dark Root Festival, it was rare to see anyone arrive after November and before May.
“Probably just passing through on his way to Salem or Portland. Blew out a tire or had to use the bathroom.”
“You have no imagination.”
Eve chattered on about how he was probably a famous Hollywood producer. She couldn’t allow anyone a normal life; she always reached for the dramatic.
But she was right. There was something special about the stranger. He had an energy that popped and sparkled.
As if he knew he was being watched, he turned in our direction. Eve ducked but I held my position, staring back. His eyes were as grey and stormy as the Oregon coastline. He knew things...secrets and mysteries.
I
felt jolted awake after a long sleep.
“We should bring him over.” Eve’s dark eyes flashed as she pushed a step-stool across the floor to gather oils and vials from the top shelf. Next, she collected an assortment of herbs from bins beneath the counter. “...Candles. I need purple candles.”
Like a fly to a spider, I thought as I watched her. She was driven when she had a mission, not the same dreamy girl who stared out the window all day talking about the life she was missing out on while she ignored customers.
“We could just walk across the street and talk to him,” I said, moving away from the window.
“Just because you’re too good for magic, doesn’t mean some of us don’t respect the craft.”
“I never said I was against magic.”
“Just practicing it. We can’t all be Wilders, you know?” Eve placed her stack onto the counter and arranged the objects into neat piles.
I felt my face redden. Wilder was a slang word, used to describe a witch who had no control over her magic. The light above us flickered.
Besides,” Eve grinned, as if she had said nothing wrong. “This is far more fun. Now, where’s the book?” She scanned the room for our mother’s spell book.
I shrugged. If she wanted to lure a man here against his will that was her business, but I wasn’t going to help.
“Here it is!” She held up a small, leather-bound journal in her hands. It was a rare book, Mother claimed, filled with spells and incantations that would have been lost to time were they not carefully preserved on these pages. As a result, only Mother’s direct descendants could remove the book from her store without suffering a terrible curse.
What the curse was, nobody knew, but Miss Sasha’s magick was formidable, and no one in Dark Root wanted to risk it.
Eve went to work creating a concoction of vanilla, rose petals and thyme, hardly glancing at the open book beside her. She had probably committed her man-luring spell to heart.
“Wouldn’t it be exciting if we fell in love and he took me away from this horrible town? Now that Merry is gone, there’s nothing to keep me here.”
A Dark Root Christmas: Merry's Gift: A Daughters of Dark Root Companion Novella Page 7