by Les Goodrich
“Crooked Island,”
“Yeah Crooked Island. Good one humans,” Shay laughed.
“I didn’t name it,” Jordan said. Jordan asked Shay if her cousin’s pirate friends had seen the treasure, or if they knew where the cave was on the island, but Shay did not know, then they talked of other things for a long time.
***
The next morning Jordan and Brit opened. When Brit had counted the safe and the drawer they unlocked the door and Jordan put out the flag and started the incense.
“Should we redo the Samhain decorations in the front window?” Brit asked and she pulled the front curtains opened and tied them back. She flipped the Closed sign around. “What’s the next pagan holiday?”
“Yule,” Jordan said, “but that feels far off to me still. Man I can’t believe Halloween was a week ago.”
“Oh I know. So much has happened. I still feel like I did something wrong breaking up with Marshal like that. Deep down I know it’s for the best. I think I was just excited that a guy liked me. I know that sounds so immature, but it’s true.”
“Brittany you’re awesome. Any guy’d be lucky to have you. You’ll find the right guy when it’s time. Have you talked to him since then?”
“Not once.”
“Then you did the right thing,” Jordan said and she set up her little crystal burner and began to make instant espresso for them. “We should get Carol to put an espresso bar in here and hire a barista.”
“That would be awesome,” Brit agreed. “So tell me more about your new guy. King James,” Brit giggled.
“Oh man well he’s great. We really get along. I mean he kind of surprises me. Just when I think I’m laying a deep idea on him, he offers some deeper perspective on it. He’s a solitary witch and I think that’s so cool. I don’t mean he’s just not in a coven. I mean he’s never heard of Light Tribe or Shadowclan or Ashenguild. He just totally taught himself. He’s read maybe twenty books on witchcraft and magick. We’ve read some of the same ones. He’s all about balance and gratefulness and he’s like this super-cute guy who’s genuinely kind, but then he has this full-on hardcore bad guy side. Not that he’s a jerk at all. He just doesn’t care if other people understand him or not. So he says, screw it. I’m a witch. Deal with it.”
“Like you,” Brit said.
“Yeah I guess. I think he needs to connect. He works in a bookshop. He lives in books. Practices witchcraft alone. But when I’m with him I just forget about myself some. I mean we’re just doing what we’re doing and we’re, well, I guess both happy to be sharing it with someone. And it’s all easy and natural feeling. I haven’t thought too much about it, and for me, that’s a good thing.”
“Sounds like someone is falling for a guy pretty hard,” Brit said.
“You know what? Maybe I am. Even I can’t believe I’m saying it but whatever.”
“So you guys agreed to not see other people?”
“We agreed to not have sex with other people while we’re doing it. For now. While we let this thing grow at it’s own pace.”
“Let this thing grow at it’s own pace?”
“You know. We’re getting to know each other. We’re attracted to each other. I can’t stop looking at him when we’re together, and I can’t stop touching him when we’re alone. I don’t wanna have sex with anyone else.”
“Not even girls?”
“Well not right now. But I’m not worried about that too much. I mean, if it wasn’t serious, what guy would be against that?”
“No guy.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m so happy for you Jordan. You deserve a solid guy. You’re a catch. Speaking of catch, tell me what Shay had to say.”
Jordan told Brit everything Shay had said and they agreed to go to the library the next day to look at some high quality charts of Crooked Island and to finish their research into the Araja lore. The morning was slow and Jordan taught Brit a host of what she called street spells, or spells that could be cast on the fly. She explained that each street spell had two parts: a verb and an element, or form of element.
“Remember when I tried to freeze the Lutin that day?” Jordan asked.
“Yeah that was awesome.”
“That was a street spell. Hinder-Ice. Hinder is the verb and ice is the element of water. That spell collects all of the water vapor in the immediate area, condenses it, and applies it toward the action of hindering the target.”
“Gotcha,” Brit said as she took notes in her newly made parchment and white leather bound book of shadows with a blue triple moon goddess symbol painted on the front. Jordan went on.
“And the spell Body-Storm. That you could have saved me from Datura with that day.”
“Sorry.”
“No it’s fine. I was desperate. Asking you to do it was crazy. You could have killed us all. Anyway, Body-Storm. That’s a risky spell, but, man, it can be powerful. The way it works is that body refers to the physical body of your target. Body is the element of Earth. Storm is the verb in this case. The spell collects the strongest winds that have blown within a given area over the previous year and one day. I don’t know how big of an area, but it’s somewhere between like a ten foot radius and a sixty foot radius, depending on who you ask. The spell collects the strongest winds that have blown within that space over the past year and focuses that energy toward the target in one blast.”
“Holy crap!”
“Right. So you can see why it’s a risky spell. Imagine if a hurricane had swept through. You could blow the person to Atlanta. But even at the weakest, the concentrated blast will always at least blow them back ten feet or so. So never use it unless you’re willing to potentially blow someone’s ass away for real.”
“Got it,” Brit said and made more notes.
Jordan taught Brit more street spells between customers as the day went on. Thought-Flood to drown a person’s memory. Reveal-Airlight to find lost objects. Reflect-Fire to cause a person’s aggression to rebound upon them.
“The more they try to attack you, the more they inflict that pain or restraint on themselves,” she told Brit. “Reflect-Fire is the best spell to stop a guy, or anyone for that matter, from physically attacking or harming you in any way. There’s no counter-curse for it. No defense. Be sure you tell your dad you know that spell now.”
She said Brit could practice Reflect-Fire on a thorny bush and once she got it right, she could walk through the most hateful hedge of thorns without a scratch.
“In fact, I need to try the Reflect-Fire spell on Nettle,” Jordan said.
“Who’s Nettle?”
“Nettle is a graveyard hob. He lives in my garden, probably under a rock somewhere, and he freaking drives me nuts. He’s horrid. He destroys my best plants and spills my tea on purpose. He starts fires and terrorizes Luna. He’s awful and I can’t get rid of him. He belongs in a graveyard scarring kids, but he’s decided to move into my yard just to make me insane.”
“Faeries can be difficult,” Brit reasoned.
“Yeah but you know Prisma? The little espresso faeire. She’s so cute and so sweet. How come Prisma is so cool and Nettle is so shitty?”
“Faeries are born from the land and they’re reflections of the areas they arise in. Products of their environment. So just like woodland faeries arose in English country gardens and thrilled Victorian kids, modern faeries arise in modern places. So we have coffee shop faeries who are hyper caffeine junkies, bookshop faeries who are neat freaks and grammar Nazis, and graveyard hobs like your pest Nettle who love death and scarring people to death I guess.
“So their attitude is a reflection of the place they first arise in. Also their demeanor can change if that environment changes. I read a story about the purple flower faeries turning bad after their fields of wild purple flowers were developed. A faerie relocation effort to populate them into plant nurseries that grow some of the purple flowers was a dismal failure. Nurseries can’t grow enough flowers to keep the faeires from tu
rning pesky and they become like little flower addicts giving the nursery people hell. The way it works with faeires is, if you’ve got a cool one, great, and try to let it be itself. If you have a bad one, oh well. Deal with it the best you can but, overall, the less you bother with them the better.”
The next day Jordan met Brit at the college library and they poured over old and new maps and travel books and charts that showed images of Acklins and Crooked Island. They returned all but one book and one chart that had an exquisitely detailed navigational image of the atoll. They spread the chart out, held the corners down with books, studied the islands, and went there in their minds. They studied anchorages and coves and they wondered if Tanner had seen a chart as good and they decided that he should see this one.
“Let’s go see what else we can find about Araja while we’re here,” Brit said. “Whatever we find today is it. We’re done. I mean we know the island now and I think we know as much about Araja or Aradia as we are going to find. One more shot then we’re out of here. Okay?”
“Okay,” Jordan said and the girls left the table to walk the aisles in the World Religion and Mythology sections. “I’ll take World Religion and you take Mythology. Let’s be quick about it. Just scan the index of any likely book for Aradia or Araja and meet back here when we’re done. Okay?”
“Okay,” Brit said and the girls split up. Brit found three books and Jordan found two and they met again at the end of the row.
“Only three,” Brit said.
“Two,” said Jordan and she lifted the old books in evidence.
“It is what it is. Come on let’s go see what we’ve got here.”
The girls walked with their books back to their table.
“Son of a bitch,” whispered Jordan and at once she and Brit saw Darkspell skulking along arm-in-arm from the area near their table and heading toward the front exit. Both girls hopped back behind a book shelf so Dracaena and Ella would not see them.
“Shit. Do you think they saw the map?” Brit asked.
“I don’t know but we have to do something about it if they did.”
“I hate those little creeps. The Thought-Flood spell!” Brit said.
“Good idea but we can’t just run up behind them in here.”
“Come on,” Brit whispered. “Follow me.”
They dumped their books on an empty shelf corner and Brit walked at a near run and Jordan followed her.
“My wand!” Jordan said loudly and a few people sounded, “Shhh!” toward her. She ran to the table and grabbed her backpack.
“Hurry up,” Brit whispered as Jordan caught back up to her. Brit led them around the sociology section and down between the windows and the long worktables. At the far corner she pushed open a heavy stairwell door and the girls scrambled down the dark stairs and emerged from a side exit by dumpsters the janitors used. They snuck, Brit in the lead, down the building wall behind a tall hedge toward the corner at the front. They peeked from the bushes to the main sidewalk along the library lawn.
“Here they come,” whispered Brit and Jordan pulled her wand from her backpack.
“I’d like to blast their asses to the moon. When was the last hurricane?”
“Just do the memory thing.”
Jordan stepped to the edge of the wall and she leaned down some to see between a gap in the hedge and she waited as Darkspell strolled together toward them, their arms hooked together, their steps falling as one. They wore matching black and white school girl uniforms, black stockings, black shoes, pale faces and black lipstick. They both wore strangely out of place big round pink-framed sunglasses. They grew closer. Fifty feet. Forty.
“How close do they have to be?” Brit asked.
“I think I can get them from here, but I wanna hit them both in one shot.”
“Can you do that?”
“We’re about to find out,” Jordan said and she took a deep slow breath and felt the spell inside her body. The desperate need for it in her heart. She lifted her wand and flourished it with a controlled wrist snap. With the snap she said, “Thought-Flood,” and a thin mist of microscopic water droplets issued forth and some of it blew cool back into her face but that was just the condensation of the spell moving out.
She and Brit watched Darkspell stop and wave something from before and around them with their hands in the air and they removed their glasses and wiped their faces as if they had walked through an unseen spiderweb. Dracaena shook her head and Ella wiped her face again, then the girls looked at each other, then looked up and around for a mere second. They rejoined their arms, replaced their sunglasses, and walked on.
“Back up you,” Brit said and she pulled Jordan by the backpack strap and the two of them slid back deeper down the wall behind the hedge and Darkspell never saw them.
Brit and Jordan went back in through the front entrance. They replaced the map and, since they’d both had enough of library for one day, they checked the books out. They talked as they left.
“Do you think the spell worked?” Brit asked.
“It looked like it did. But it might not matter. If those little demons took a picture of the map, The Poison Apple could still figure out that’s our island. This is not good. We have to tell Carol.”
“We did all we could though,” Brit added.
“Yeah, we did all we could,” Jordan agreed.
“Tribe,” said Brit and she looked to Jordan.
“Tribe,” Jordan smiled and she put her arm around Brit’s shoulder and they walked across the sunny campus and all around them people of the mundane world ignored magick and were bored by miracles.
Chapter 16
The Boat
When Jordan and Brit walked into the shop, Tanner was ringing up a customer and Carol was suggesting books on familiars for two teen witches, a guy and a girl, at the bookshelf in the back. The kids took a stack of books and sat in the comfortable chairs at the shelf and Carol clicked the lamp switch to make the bulb go to the brighter stage.
“Thank you,” the guy teen witch said.
“Just let us know if we can help with anything,” Carol said and walked to the front and saw the girls come in. “What brings the two of you in here so early?”
“Hi,” Jordan said to the customer, an older lady, at the register.
“Hi and bye,” the woman said with a wink and she left the store.
“Who’s back there?” Jordan asked as Carol walked up and Jordan leaned to inconspicuously look toward the bookshelf seats.
“Just two customers looking at books,” Carol said looking back herself as if to confirm it.
“Witches?” Jordan asked.
“Young witches, but yes, witches,” Carol said. “Why?”
“Can we talk real fast?” Jordan asked in a quiet tone and she moved to the counter with Brit and Tanner leaned over the glass and Carol joined them. Jordan continued to speak in her hushed volume.
“The island Tanner found is the island where the painting and the spell book are. We’re sure of it. Crooked Island. The mermaids call it Crescent Moon Island. Shay has cousins in the Keys who know who found the cave witch’s things. Ghost pirates. They left the stuff where they found it, but we think they’re guarding it. They only care about it for the money but they’re spooked about tinkering with an old witch’s belongings.
“Ghost pirates are dealing with the Fomorian to broker a sale of the items to whatever Shadowclan witches the Fomorian are dealing with and we can assume that’s our buddies over at The Poison Apple. But it’s not going smoothly. The pirates are fed up with the Fomorians and by all accounts so is Shadowclan. But as far as we can tell Shadowclan doesn’t really know who the ghost pirates are or even that they’re the ones guarding the treasure. They only know what the Fomorians have told them and that could be anything.”
“Anything but the truth,” Brit added and Jordan went on.
“Right. Their dishonesty may have been working in our favor all along.”
“Outstanding,”
Carol beamed. “Good work, all of you.”
“But that’s not all,” Brit said.
“What?” asked Tanner.
“The Poison Apple witches might know about the island now.”
“How?” asked Carol.
“We think they may have seen the map Jordan and I were looking at in the library yesterday.”
“You think who may have?”
“Darkspell,” Brit said.
“Dracaena and Ella,” Jordan added.
“Did they see the map or not?” Carol asked.
“We’re not sure,” Jordan said. “But we Thought-Flooded them both just in case.”
“You Thought-Flooded Dracaena and Ella in the college library?”
“No outside of the library. On the sidewalk.” Jordan said.
Carol breathed deeply. Her mouth twisted with a disgusted look and she starred at Tanner.
“What? I didn’t do anything,” Tanner said and Carol addressed the girls.
“Do you realize you could have avoided this whole thing if you had just done a little scrying spell before you went to the library?”
Jordan stood up for them. “You can’t go around scrying every time you go somewhere. You’d end up like that old paranoid witch Mrs. Radcliffe who thinks the FBI is after her.”
“But when you’re doing sensitive research like that in a public place Jordan? Brittany? It’s a good idea to think ahead. Jordan, you’re a talented witch and you may fly by the seat of your pants and get away with it a lot, but you two have got to step your witch game up. Scry. Cast. Kick Ass. You can’t keep playing damage control like this.
“Imagine if Gwen had been on the green when you flooded those two. She’d have turned you into statues on the lawn and you’d have pigeons on your heads right now.”
“You’re right,” Jordan said.