Tracking Magic

by Maria E. Schneider

  The good news was that she paid me for two days work upfront. The bad news was that she wouldn't tell me what the magical object was.

  "You'll know it when you find it. Bring it back. If it takes you longer than the two days, I'll call a real dog." She pointed to the top of a cliff that was now visible through the trees. "The Object of Power was taken from there. The lightning storm should have kept him from escaping, but he planned for it somehow.

  "Up where?" I saw nothing but sheer rock. The stream ran again at our feet, the ground sandier between rounded river rocks.

  "You're the bloodhound. You figure it out."

  # # #

  I spent the next half-hour trekking along the cliff. The Hag, I mean my witch-employer, had given me no more directions, but basically I stayed on the worn trail that meandered back and forth in a very long switchback formation.

  There were plenty of birds, insects-- which I slapped at--and trees. No lightning or likely thieves. Definitely scrub oak and a juniper here and there. Had I left Texas?

  Wherever I was, someone had known about The Hag's Object of Power, otherwise it wouldn't be missing. I'd like to find out if this object would make it possible for her to return me safely. She didn't seem that accurate with her spells at the moment.

  I almost missed seeing the young lady above me because of the ladder propped up against the base of the cliff. The ladder looked a great deal newer than the "driftwood" that had been my carrier. Two freshly cut poles were lashed together by short rungs and leather bindings. When the ladder started to move upward, I grabbed it.

  That's when I saw the young lady. Had she not tried to snatch the ladder up, I might have climbed it, which is probably why she tried to haul it up.

  "Let go!" Muscular legs dug into the ledge where she stood. Her blue jeans and t-shirt were almost a match of my own, except her white shirt was filled out nicely in front, while my brown one...I'd like to think my muscles flexed admirably as I tried to keep hold of the ladder.

  Her hand clung to either side, but I had the advantage. Not only was I stronger, I didn't have to worry about being dragged over the side of the drop off.

  "Not gonna let go." I pulled, but gently. I really wished her no harm. Well, unless she had taken the Object of Power. But even then I just wanted to get said object and move on. "I'm looking for an Object of Power for the Hag," I blurted out. "I have a feeling I'm going to need this ladder."

  She stopped pulling. "You didn't take it? Mom sent you?"

  Had I just called her mother a Hag? My face reddened. Then again, she had recognized the description.

  "Who are you?" The edge of demand in her voice was almost as bad as The Hag's.

  "Max. She hired me to get the Object back. Is it stolen a lot?"

  The lady shook her pony tail. Shorter curls danced around her forehead and over her ears. Her hair was a lighter brown than mine, but not blond. "No one but her even believes it is gone. No one but her knew how to use it."

  "So, uh...what is it?"

  With a sigh, the lady released the ladder. It nearly fell over my head since I wasn't expecting the top-heavy weight. "Sorry." She reached out, grabbed a pole and helped me set it to earth. Not sure she wouldn't push it over, I didn't start climbing.

  "I'm not sure what the stupid thing looks like. Only mom knew. Makes looking for it difficult."

  A lot of things were difficult about this situation. "Was there a reason it was hidden here?"

  She nodded. I put one sneaker on the bottom rung. She looked to be holding the top steady. Well, I had already landed hard once today. Resolutely, I began climbing.

  "The ancients who lived here knew the secret to longevity and youth. Mom always said as a descendant it was her heritage, but I'm not really sure about that part."

  I made it to the ledge and hopped off the ladder. She began pulling it up, so I reached down to help.

  With the ladder now between us, I said, "I'm Max. What's your name?"

  "Broom Hilda." She watched me carefully, but her eyes were laughing. "Just kidding. Amber." Solemnly, we shook hands between ladder rungs. "Mom is the witch, not me. She found the talisman that the Indians imbued with a spell for long life and youthfulness. It's pretty obvious that it's gone." She sucked her cheeks in and wrinkled her forehead in parody. "You saw what she looked like if she called you."

  "She wasn't like that before?"

  Amber shrugged. "She isn't young, to be sure. But she didn't look like that." She moved the ladder several feet along the ledge and set it against the base.

  "Cliff dwellings!" I shouted.

  Startled, she looked over her shoulder at me.

  "I didn't know where I was," I explained. "The...your mom conjured me from Texas." That there weren't any cliff dwellings in Texas worried me.

  "Ah. You're in New Mexico. Cliff dwellings, Gila Forest."

  The New Mexico part explained the cactus and the dwellings. My geography wasn't so good that the rest of the information helped any. "What Indians?"

  Amber shrugged and began climbing while I held the ladder steady. "No one knows. Anasazi? Pre-pueblo? Pre-Navajo?"

  I would have responded, but a rumble of thunder interrupted.

  "We need to hurry," Amber said.

  "Why?" Even without an answer, I climbed up fast. "I thought your mom said that the storm would follow the perpetrator?"

  Amber gave a delicate lady-like grunt as she hefted the ladder up. "That's what was supposed to happen. But somehow when dad stole the Object of Power, he figured out how to leave the curse part here. Now anytime I come here to try and figure out what happened and what the Object is, a storm comes in."

  "Did you say, dad?" She was halfway up the ladder headed towards the next level. Despite the very attractive view above, I couldn't keep from glancing down nervously. The ledge where we stood was mere inches deep. I eased up the ladder very carefully. With the wind picking up, we could be plucked from the cliff face like errant pine cones.

  The first thunderheads obscured the sun.

  I moved faster.

  "Dad thinks she should do without the spell for youth. He says a ghost told him so. Since she threatened to divorce him, I'm pretty sure he took her Object, but I don't know how he figured out what to steal. I've been here almost every day trying to figure out what it is. If I can figure it out, I can put it back."

  The last ledge was broader by almost a foot. That is to say we could run, single file, for the cave-like opening. I would have left the ladder, but she was smarter. She yanked it up and dragged it along.

  I sprinted behind her, trying not to kill myself by tripping over the back of the ladder.

  Tingling, like I often felt when I smelled magic, moved up my legs.

  "Aaagh!" I threw myself at the opening, hoping I was in time.

  Lightning, heat and exploding air hit the dirt. The force of it propelled me forward into the cave opening.

  "Oof." My landing was considerably softer than the earlier one. Too bad for Amber. "Sorry." It was unfair to linger so I rolled off her flattened form and helped her up.

  "That was close." Since I hadn't released her hand, she used the link to guide me deeper into the cave. "I heard you coming up the path today or I already would have come up here. I'm usually inside before the lightning starts."

  Thunderheads roared and rain pelted the mountainside in frustration. The ceiling was high enough to stand in some places, but lower in many others. "It can't be a rock," she said. "Well, it could be. But how did dad figure out which rock to take?"

  I sniffed. The storm raged outside, sending the wind to crawl through the nooks and crannies of the caves. Some rooms had been widened with presumably human hands. Smoke etched a wall here and there, and partial adobe walls remained in places. I sniffed again. The lightning had a certain smell...

  If I hadn't just been conjured with some of that magical residue on my person, I doubt I'd have recognized the smell as belonging to The Hag, but with such a recent memory, I
followed the drifting air. There was a lot of wind. I was sidetracked more than once by drifts of air battling and mixing.

  Amber was smarter than most people. She remained silent and let me do my work. She didn't let go of my hand until we were far enough away from an opening that a fairy light was required.

  In the near dark, I couldn't tell she was retrieving a light until the soft glow illuminated the rounded chamber. Although the globe was small, I wondered how she fit the fairy light in a pocket of her tight jeans. I tried not to inspect the situation too obviously, but she was a lot more intriguing than the cave walls.

  Forcing myself back to the task at hand, I noted some scrawled caveman graffiti and an errant corncob or six half buried in a pit in the corner. Air swirled around the chamber, leading me astray again, until I followed the eddies to another small room.

  The pit, when I found it, didn't contain the magic, but it held the air long enough to almost fool me. Next to it, another old bundle of corncobs rested in a shallow indent. I sniffed again cautiously. There was no smell of death, which surprised me. Of course, even if someone had died here, the remains hadn't likely been left here. If there were ghosts, they were staying quiet.

  I breathed again and turned to the cobs. "One of those. The lightning storm is tied to one of those."

  "How do you know?" Amber knelt down and scanned the four or five possibilities. "How can you tell?"

  "They smell like your mom."

  From the reflection of the fairy light I could see her slant her eyes at me. "She doesn't smell that strong. Old or not."

  I wasn't going to explain so I said nothing.

  "Which one?" She picked up one, then another. Without touching them, I couldn't tell, but it wasn't necessary. "Aha!" She held up her prize. "Look!"

  I peered closer. She held the fairy light up.

  "Hollow?" I guessed.

  "They all are, I think. But this one has an open end."

  I picked up two others for comparison. She was right. The one she had looked as though it had been hollowed out by hand and then plugged, only the plug was now missing.

  I breathed again, but I couldn't tell the age of the cobs. They could be from last week's dinner or that of a century ago. The magic though, lingered. "That's the one."

  "Mom must have hidden the Object in here." Amber sighed. "So it's something small." She set the cob down. "Dad probably figured she wouldn't or couldn't spell an ancient talisman with her own protection magic. He must have taken whatever was inside and left the corncob."

  "Have you thought of asking him?"

  She flashed her green eyes at me in annoyance. "Have you ever tried asking one of your parents about an argument?"

  Hmm. I wasn't certain what I'd do given this situation, but if her dad had the Object, I could probably smell it unless her father were a wizard surrounded by magical objects. "What does your dad do? Maybe we can look through his place and spot something." If I could smell it, we could return it, and I could go home.

  "He's a grave master."

  My heart may have missed a beat. I stared at her without speaking.

  She rolled her eyes at me, misunderstanding my slack-jawed reaction.

  "Don't tell me you're the squeamish type! Someone has to look after people once they are on their way!"

  A strange tingle crossed my body, not unlike lightning--or magic. "My grandfather was a grave master." No doubt meeting someone like her was pure coincidence and had nothing to do with Fate. Or maybe meeting her was some weird result of a magical confluence when her mother's spell went wrong. Lightning flashed outside, seeming to catch the fairy light in a glowing sparkle.

  Thunder cracked. We both jumped. I dropped my gaze, staring at the corncob instead of her green eyes. My grandfather had been a gentle man who tended rock gardens, flowers, and the ghosts. It was from him I inherited my talents. My mother had always hoped I'd follow in his footsteps. Given my talent of smelling the dead, working in a graveyard was not going to be my first choice. Given that I could smell the dead and magic, finding a magical object in a graveyard...would be like trying to distinguish the difference between a dead fish and a live one. "Well," I said. "Can't hurt to look, right?"

  # # #

  It took almost a full hour for The Hag's thunderstorm to wear itself out. Had Amber left the ladder out in the elements, no doubt it would have blown down into the canyon, leaving us trapped on the highest ledge.

  When Amber crossed the burned spot where lightning had just about tagged me, I got a strong whiff of ozone, magic and...my feet tingled.

  Apprehensively, I looked up. Clear skies, but magic was funny. It had almost gotten me and had been close enough to get a taste. I sniffed. Definitely ozone and even stronger lingering magic now that Amber was past.

  "Hang on," I called to Amber. She was already lowering the ladder down to the first spot.

  I scooted back inside, retrieved the cob and cautiously stuck my head back out.

  Before stepping across the spot, I threw the cob as far as I could over the side. "Too much focus here."

  For a heartbeat, I thought I was being paranoid, but then there was a burst of light. Maybe not lightning, but fire. "Aaahh!" The cob exploded somewhere down below. My shirt sparked from an impossible backlash. I hit the ground, rolling back inside the cave, hoping the magic didn't get Amber.

  I buried my head under my elbows and concentrated on breathing.

  "Max?!?"

  I kept my head down. Cautiously, I sniffed, trying to determine if the magic was building or not. I couldn't tell. I peeked towards the opening. A large shadow came running in, but it was just Amber.

  I waited. When nothing bad happened, I sat up, patting myself down. My t-shirt had a hole that looked suspiciously like a cigarette burn. "Hmph."

  Amber knelt down next to me. "You okay? I had no idea that would happen. I didn't notice anything when I went out."

  "You were further away. I had the cob in my hand. Maybe your mother hates me. Who knows?" The more I dealt with Hag's spells, the less enthusiastic I was about getting sent home.

  Amber offered a hand and after I stood, she kept mine in hers. We crossed the burn together. This time, there was no tingle, at least not from the ground.

  If anyone came back here, the cave would be shelter rather than a death trap.

  Amber let go of my hand and started down the ladder. I waited until she reached the bottom and then followed.

  # # #

  Graveyards were not usually scary places for me. Older graveyards in the countryside were the best, peaceful and almost welcoming. Old ghosts were mellowed by time if they even bothered to be a presence. The smell of death, well, it ranged from God-awful to sickly sweet, from fertilizer to fresh-mowed grass or sometimes the scent of very old paper. The personalities didn't necessarily go with the smells, but I generally avoided trying to discern that kind of information.

  It was late evening by the time we arrived at the Georgetown Cemetery, miles away from the cliff dwellings. The town that had supported it was long gone; not even a house remained. Only the old folks from surrounding areas knew the cemetery was still here and from its empty peace, few visited. The care was left to mother nature and people like my grandfather or Amber's father.

  Dark, rich shale crunched lightly underfoot. Old graves were scattered near an entrance guarded by tall pines. There were almost always magical objects in graveyards; gifts left for the dead imbued with a spell or two. Sometimes the spells were intentional, sometimes they were accidents created by strong emotion, love...or hatred.

  My first impression was very hopeful. Though there was the smell of death, many of the graves were so ancient, there was nothing left save a single stone with a hand-etched cross. The light breeze carried a ghost or two, but little more than wisps.

  I intended to search out magic, but a glow of light on a gravestone made searching moot. Ghosts often used lights, but I had not seen one surround the date on a headstone before. I stared at t
he twelve-inch rock.

  Benny Rodriguiz, Dec1887 - Feb 1888

  Two, maybe three months old. I sniffed lightly, but so fleeting a life, even a recent one, would be nothing more than an unscented breeze.

  "There's another one," Amber said softly, pointing to another glow.

  Because of my talents, I was never sure how much I was able to see that others could not, but obviously this ghost--or magic--was visible to her as well.

  I reached for her hand. Hers met me halfway. Softly we walked to the stone with its beacon. Looking over my shoulder, I saw that the child's stone had gone silent. The new stone declared:

  Martha Wilson, Wife of Joe Wilson, 1900 - 1915

  There was a small, upright stone next to the grave. It might have been an errant stone or it might mark a child's grave. Martha might have died in childbirth.

  I didn't bother to try and smell death. It was all around me.

  We walked carefully, trying to avoid stepping on graves. In such an old place, it was difficult. A few graves were surrounded by rusted gates, but not all. I cringed when a quick scent of...pine? and a tingle ran up my leg. The spot was not marked with anything at all.

  Amber pointed again, this time to glints of light on the top of a relatively new iron fence.

  We hurried over.

  Four graves, all with crosses, rested inside. One, marked with an iron marker, glowed.

  "A hundred and twenty three years old?" I read.

  "I don't think they kept careful track back then," Amber said. "Dad, what are you up to?" She turned one way and then the other, looking around, but evening light had turned to dark. "It has to be him."

  I wasn't so certain.

  The glow in the growing darkness was easy to spot, but this time, I smelled the magic too; a scent of wood, earth, and perhaps old quilt batting drying in the sun. The entire marble headstone radiated a soft yellow hue.

  Youth and beauty are for following dreams, not for the sake of youth itself. Without the dream, youth is wasted, as a child who never reached the age to dream at all.

  "What is that symbol?" I leaned forward, peering closely at the marble headstone. The sharp smell of magic assaulted my senses, pushing me back.