Strange Alchemy

by Gwenda Bond

  “Where is it?” she demands.

  “Still in my mom’s car. I didn’t want her — or especially Dad — to see it. He’s an antique firearms nerd, remember?”

  Miranda nods. “Right. And it’s not just valuable, it’s magic. The long-lost alchemists — of which my frakking ancestor was one — could come to retrieve it at any time.”

  She turns at the next major intersection, heading back toward Manteo, and I make another attempt. “Where are we going next?”

  Her mouth opens as if she’s about to speak, to answer, but she doesn’t say anything. She speeds up. The hula girl on the dash shimmies hard with the force of the pressure.

  “Where are we going?” I ask again, getting concerned and trying not to show it.

  “I’m going to see,” she says, “if I can get off this island.”

  I’m surprised. I let her drive on in silence for a while before I chance speaking. “We’re just going to abandon everyone?”

  She laughs, without humor. You don’t really know this girl, I think. But I know her well enough to know this isn’t like her.

  “Why shouldn’t I? What has anyone here ever done for me?” she asks.

  “I can’t just go.” I didn’t want to come back, to get involved. But I can’t leave without seeing this through.

  Miranda gives that humorless laugh again. “You believe what he said?”

  She breezes through town way over the speed limit, and we’re now past the turn-off to Fort Raleigh. I want to understand what switch has flipped inside her to send her running. But I don’t want to answer her question. Not yet.

  I open my mouth to say something innocuous, and she shocks me into keeping quiet with her next words. “Did you know I’ve never been off the island? That’s part of the family ‘curse.’ Our feet ‘are bound to walk this patch of earth.’”

  She’s quoting something but not anything I’ve ever heard. There are plenty of whispers and rumors about the Blackwoods. I heard a good share of them in my short time on the island, after I went raving psycho on her in the school lobby. Nothing like this though. It was always just the usual — that Blackwoods never amount to much, that they’re the unluckiest family on the island since forever, that her dad was a drunk, that her mother had been soft-hearted, that Miranda has bad luck just because she was born a Blackwood.

  The stories always struck me as local legend, the kind of reputation earned by families who made the mistake of hanging around Roanoke Island too long. Like the Rawling family gifts.

  But this… is it possible?

  I struggle to keep my voice level, to betray none of my skepticism. “You’re saying that you’ve literally never been off the island?”

  Miranda’s head bobs in a fierce nod, and she looks over at me, engaging with me fully for the first time since we left Whitson’s. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. I grew up” — she slows the car a little, the dashboard dancer weaving to a more peaceful melody — “being told by my father that I could never leave. That Blackwoods have been here since the colony and that we are cursed to stay here. Being told stories that gave me nightmares… that were nightmares. Stories about how my grandmother walked off the island toward the mainland once and lost her mind at exactly the tenth step. She sat in a rocking chair for the rest of her life picking grains of sand off beach glass. That if I ever left, my feet would burst into flames. My body would disappear, and I’d become a ghost.”

  What kind of lunatic was her Dad? I wonder. “This island is eight miles long. About two miles across. How have you never left it?”

  “I tried to test the stories when I was a kid. I waded out to my waist in the Sound and nothing happened, so I started to swim further out and then… I’ve never been so sick. I only got better when I swam back.”

  “Maybe it was psychosomatic? Maybe you freaked yourself out. You said your dad told you that you couldn’t leave.”

  “He told me those stories, and I don’t know if I believed them. I told myself I didn’t. But I guess I believed them enough to not risk leaving for real. Not after that one time. No matter how much I wanted it.” She shakes her head, black curls jostling. “You must think I’m crazy.”

  “I see and hear dead people,” I remind her. Briefly I wonder if I’ve ever heard the voice of her grandmother. Not that I’m able to distinguish individual voices and forms. I picture the cream envelope that holds Gram’s letter — I haven’t been brave enough to open it yet. I planned on asking Miranda to read it with me later.

  The Manns Harbor Bridge and the waters of the sound are coming up fast in the distance. Perfect rows of tall trees flank the highway, the sign that bids visitors farewell just ahead. It’s a postcard view.

  Miranda pulls the car off to the shoulder before we reach the bridge and steers into a parking lot bordered by sand. There are some rocks, a bench, and a tree prettily arranged beside the patch of beach, and then the bridge itself stretching over the greenish blue water. A cluster of purple birds on the beach flies away at our arrival, rising from the sand in a shuddering wave of colorful wings.

  “What are you planning to do?” I ask.

  “Stay here,” she says, getting out of the car. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  I jump out to follow and catch up to her on the sand. The wind tosses Miranda’s hair in a storm as I grab her shoulder and spin her to face me.

  She isn’t crazy. She’s just acting crazy. I understand the things in your own mind that can make you push the world away, flailing.

  “If it’s this important to you then I support your crazy plan,” I say. “I think you should try to leave.”

  Her eyes narrow. “You do?”

  “We need to know exactly what we’re dealing with. Whitson,” I say, “he helped — at least I think he did — but he admitted he doesn’t know everything yet. It’ll be an experiment. And if you can leave, then you’ll feel better, right? Having an escape route?”

  She’s still wary, still waiting for me to disappoint her, I think. But she nods.

  “We should just take the car across the bridge,” I say. “Together.”

  “No, I’m not risking you getting hurt. I’m going on foot.”

  Miranda whirls and crosses the small slice of beach that remains, continuing without pause over the grassy patch next to the bridge. I stay right behind her.

  She doesn’t hesitate so much as brace herself when she reaches the white line at the edge of the actual highway. Her shoulders rise and fall on a deep breath, and then she steps onto the road. One deliberate step, followed by another…

  I check her progress over the side. The next steps are the ones that will take her off the mainland, over the water of the Sound. How precise are curses anyway?

  A sob rips from her throat.

  I hurry to her side. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh God…” Fear etches her features, but she moves forward. A baby step. She trembles in the wind blowing across the bridge.

  Seven steps, eight, nine…

  What if the story about her grandmother is true?

  “Grant, it hurts. It hurts,” she says. Misery and pain fill her voice. Then, she howls. The scream is like knives are stabbing her.

  Miranda stumbles, lifts her foot…

  Before she can complete the tenth step, I grab her and haul her back to the edge of the bridge. She barely fights.

  Miranda is breathing so hard I’m afraid her lungs will burst. What if the curse can do anything it decides to?

  “Miranda, talk to me. Please.”

  “It stopped when you put me back here.” She wails. “I can’t leave.”

  I’m desperate to do something to help her. A yellow SUV drives by with its horn blaring and I flip it off, which makes me feel marginally better. I guide Miranda over the barrier, afraid she’ll dash back onto the bridge if we stay near t
he highway.

  “I can’t leave,” she says again. She tears herself loose from my hold and kicks the sand. “I can’t fucking leave this place.”

  Fuck instead of frak. This is bad. “Miranda, I’m so sorry…” I reach out to her.

  “You’re sorry,” she says, laughing that crazy laugh from the car. But she shuffles closer to me. I catch her, hands on her shoulders, steadying her.

  She goes on, “Do you believe Roswell? Witchcraft plans, immortality, my family cursed since the start of the colony?”

  “I wasn’t sure before, but… yes. Now I believe it. We have to do something — and leaving is apparently off the list.”

  She pushes against my chest, leaving her palms flat against it. There are noises in the background: a few cars, birds flapping and calling overhead, trees rustling in echo of the water. I barely hear them. The sadness in her face is too much.

  “I can’t leave,” she says. “But you can. You made it off. Why would you ever come back here? What if Mary Blackwood was evil, and I am too? Maybe that’s why I’m cursed. What if our family deserves everything we got?”

  “No.” I slide my hands down her arms and back up again. I’m desperate to stop the pain, to bring her back to being Miranda. I tug her closer by her shirtsleeves, meaning to kiss her.

  She lets me bring her in close.

  For a moment, I’m winning her, bringing her back. Until she shoves me away.

  I fall to my knees, hitting the sand hard. A keening sound emerges from my throat that I can’t stop.

  Then I realize that Miranda isn’t the reason I’m falling. What pushed me down and down and down is far worse.

  The spirits return with hurricane force, and the screaming shadows rip my sense apart.

  Chapter 17

  MIRANDA

  I can’t believe what I just did.

  Grant stays with me while I’m acting balls-out crazy, and I pay him back by shoving him to the ground. Full-on rejection when I don’t want to reject him. When he is, in fact, the only person I have on my side.

  My flare into anger in Roswell’s library, the way I drove here, the — oh God — true stories I confessed about not being able to leave the island, insisting on walking out onto the bridge… I came this close to telling him about seeking fantasy escape routes after Mom died. All that pales next to what flooded from my mouth after the childhood stories were proved right. It’s nothing next to pushing him away.

  One thing I know, in this moment, none of those actions or words belonged to me. Or maybe they poured from some small part of me, but it was a part I’d never willingly let take control.

  Sand swallows my feet, and I pull them free to kneel before him. It’s only once I’m close that I see Grant is in pain.

  Oh no.

  His head slumps into his chest. I gently shake his shoulder. His face lifts a fraction, enough to show that his eyes are squeezed shut. The wrinkles at their edges are like wounds slashed into his face. He cries out with pure anguish.

  “Grant?” I do what I can to tamp down my panic.

  He tips forward and rolls onto his side, forming an untidy ball on the sand. His eyes stay closed as he rocks into the grainy embrace of the ground beneath him. His hands lift to shield his ears from sounds I can’t hear.

  “The spirits,” I realize. “They came back, didn’t they?”

  What do I do about it? is the real question. This is the kind of thing I should have brought up in polite conversation with Sara earlier. Hey, what do I do if your son suddenly turns into a spirit tuning fork again?

  I pet his shoulder with a tentative hand, and he grabs it. I detect a slight tug, or think I do, and — despite how strange it feels — I lie down beside him, pressing my body against his in the sand. The hand gripping mine moves to re-cover his ear, and his body trembles against mine. I hold on, afraid that if I let go, he’ll be gone forever.

  “Home,” he says after a while.

  Reluctantly, I let go. I get up to help him off the sand. I stumble, then freeze as I look out over the water.

  The tall black ship sails toward us. Three black sails of varying sizes swell in the wind. The ornate symbols stitched on them in gray clearly bear John Dee’s mark. The immense shadow the ship throws across the water nearly tricks me into thinking it’s real. Real in the way I’m real, the sand is real, Grant is real.

  The shadow shifts and billows like the black sails. We need to get out of here, stat.

  Turning away from the phantom ship’s menacing glide, I bend and pull at Grant’s arms until I get one of them over my shoulder. “We have to get up now,” I say.

  He manages to climb to his feet and leans heavily on me. A low moan escapes his lips. “Home,” he breathes.

  I rotate us in a slow circle, not comfortable leaving the black ship and its shadow unobserved. “Do you see it?” I ask, searching the horizon.

  But there’s nothing to see. A bridge, calm waters, a brilliant blue sky.

  No wonder old John White always seems so cranky by the end of the play, looking for something and finding nothing.

  It takes an age to cross the ten feet to Pineapple with our clumsy tandem footsteps. “We’re never going to be on an Olympic team for anything that requires synchronization,” I say. Grant is unresponsive, but I talk at him to ease my nerves, like he’s in a coma and the doctor has told me it might help.

  “We could be in the freak Olympics,” I say as I deposit him against the rear passenger door. “Well, I don’t have any actual skills. No, no, that’s not what I mean. I have skills, but not like you have skills.”

  Sand coats us both in a fine, scratchy second skin. It clings to his eyelashes, his eyes still closed. He looks like he’s asleep standing up.

  “If there was a freak Olympics,” — I get the door open and slip my arm around his side to help him ease into the seat — “maybe we could get training so we didn’t suck so much at this.” I clump his feet over the edge so he’s in the car.

  On impulse, I brush sand from his cheek, then more softly from his eyelashes. They flutter against the pressure, and Grant opens one eye. Bloodshot rings the brown iris.

  “Miranda,” he says.

  “That’s me,” I agree, glad for the sign he’s in there somewhere. “I’m taking you home.” Careful not to catch some limb of his in it, I shut the door and scurry around to my own side and into the driver’s seat. “Not that you’re going to change the subject that easily. We really need more practice if we’re going to medal.”

  “Music.” The word is a moan.

  “I see how it is,” I say, “trying to shut me up.”

  I turn on the used CD player I installed in Pineapple’s dash — one of my prouder moments — and crank the volume. Neko Case croons about red bells. Deep red bells.

  I drive, grateful to stop talking. I have to think.

  What Roswell shared with us was on the crazy side, but I can’t deny how much being on the bridge hurt. I counted my steps until the pain forced the numbers out of my head. My feet burned like I was walking into a furnace — like I was a girl forced to dance in hot iron shoes, a mermaid forced to split her tail and walk on land. Fairy-tale level is the only description that captures it.

  Which means magic isn’t so crazy. Not when you factor in the leaping birthmark and our family legend, the missing people, and John Dee’s symbol.

  How Dad died is important. Grant said so, and maybe his dad has learned more. Roswell’s theory might explain some things, but it doesn’t explain everything. We know more than he does now.

  I look over at Grant. His neck is crooked back, eyes shut, mouth moving in silent accord with the lyrics or the voices he hears. The intensity of the pain has faded from his expression, at least.

  He’s in no shape to help you, though.

  “My turn,” I say.

  *
>
  When we reach Grant’s driveway, the first thing I notice is the unfamiliar vehicle parked beside Chief Rawling’s cruiser. The hulking black SUV gleams like someone polishes it constantly to remove any speck of sand or dust. I watch too much TV not to guess what it means — there are federal agents inside the house.

  Maybe they already know who murdered Dad, maybe that’s why they’re here. The rush autopsy might be complete. I turn off the car, the swell of Neko’s voice dying so abruptly that the silence makes Grant moan.

  “You stay here,” I say, making a split-second decision. I won’t subject him to the prying eyes of strangers when he’s like this.

  Smoothing my hair and T-shirt, I walk to the front door. Sure, I want to know if the missing pieces of the puzzle are found, but first I need Grant’s mom to help get him inside. The door opens before my second knock.

  Chief Rawling looks around and, without asking for Grant, says, “Come inside, Miranda.”

  “Chief, I… is Sara…” I try to banish the memory of the chief interrupting Grant and me the night before.

  “She’s in here,” he says.

  He leaves me no choice except to follow him across the creaking planks of the floor. The footfalls of his heavy-soled work shoes echo. Sara sits on the floral couch in the living room, an unusual primness in her posture.

  Across from Sara, on the love seat, are the expected agents. A man and a woman in nearly identical dark suits — he’s young but already bald; her graying hair is slicked back into a knot at her neck. The tight quarters of the love seat force them to sit close together, and their spines are stick-straight to compensate for the lack of room.

  Based on these two, I assume that most TV shows get FBI agents half right. They are serious and intimidating, but neither one is attractive enough to inspire decent fan-fic anytime soon.

  “Um, hello…” I linger in the doorway as Chief Rawling pulls out a spare wooden chair near the wall for me to sit on, then returns to the sofa beside his wife. The feds watch me with interest. Too much interest.