The Crimson Brand

by Brian Knight

  Then, almost fearfully, “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

  Penny turned to Zoe and Katie, her eyebrows raised with the unasked question, the one they would all have to say yes to.

  Katie’s response was immediate, a smile and a nod.

  Zoe’s took longer. She watched Ellen for a long moment, frowning in concentration. Penny thought she was trying to imagine Little Miss Congeniality fighting off monsters like the Birdman. Whether or not she could, Zoe finally shrugged, then nodded.

  “It’s agreed then?” Ronan stood above them all, looking more pleased than Penny had seen him for months. Penny knew for Ronan there had never been any doubt. He’d accepted her as easily as he had Katie.

  Ellen looked up at his words, her anxiety returning. “What’s agreed?”

  She took a step backward toward the door, giving the wand in Penny’s hand a mistrusting look.

  By way of explanation, Penny held the wand out to her handle first.

  Ellen put her hands safely behind her back and shook her head. “No … I can’t ….”

  “Can’t what?” Zoe asked, raising a sardonic eyebrow. “Can’t do this?”

  Zoe took the wand from Penny and shot a fireball into the guttering fire. The flames swelled and leapt upward, painting Ellen’s startled face with bright light.

  “Or this,” Zoe said, plucking a stone from the dirt and throwing it into the air. She aimed her wand at it, and it stopped in midair. With a flourish, she pointed the wand at the granite cliff face on the other side of the creek, and the stone flew like a bullet toward it, smashing itself to dust with a loud crack.

  “Or maybe this,” she said, now grinning mischievously as she pressed the palm of her left hand against one of the willow trees ringing the hollow. The tree seemed to shiver itself to life, and several slender and leafy whips snaked down from the canopy of green above them. They reached playfully for Ellen as she darted and dodged them.

  “I can’t do that,” Katie said, sounding impressed.

  Zoe withdrew her hand from the tree’s truck, and the whips returned to their places in the braided green canopy. Then she advanced on Ellen.

  “Zoe, stop.” If she was trying to prove a point, Penny thought she was going too far.

  Ellen backed away another step, then stopped and stood her ground, her normally open, friendly face contracting into something like anger. “No, I can’t, but that doesn’t mean I’ll let you push me around!”

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” Zoe said, and reversed her grip on the wand, offering it to Ellen. “The only reason you can’t do any of those things is because you haven’t tried yet.”

  Zoe’s initial indecision seemed to be gone now. She looked eager for Ellen to take the wand from her, and Penny thought she knew why. Ellen had stood up for herself, held her ground and faced Zoe, with no friends behind her and without a wand of her own.

  “Just take it,” Katie urged. “You won’t believe it until you see for yourself.”

  “You’re like us,” Penny said. “If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be on a first-name basis with Ronan.”

  Ellen turned doubtful eyes on Penny, but took the offered wand from Zoe’s hand.

  Ellen’s eyes widened as her fingers closed around the handle. A low crackle of energy seemed to jump from her hand and into the weathered wood, and the tip flashed once, brightly, before conjuring a wind that filled the hollow, stirring dust and fallen leaves into a vortex then spun with her at its center.

  The wand dropped from her hand, landed between her feet, and the wind died at once.

  For nearly a minute no one spoke.

  Katie watched Ellen closely, almost rude in her interest.

  Zoe had a smug smile, its full force aimed at Ellen.

  Ronan was curled up and resting on his limb, looking almost smugger than Zoe.

  Ellen’s hands had returned behind her back. She didn’t bend to pick up the dropped wand, but her eyes never left it, either.

  Penny guessed it was up to her.

  “We belong to a …,” Penny couldn’t seem to find the right word for what they belong to.

  “A coven,” Katie offered helpfully.

  “An ancient and sacred order,” Zoe stated grandly, but spoiled the effect by bursting into a fit of the giggles.

  “Whatever it is we belong to,” Penny said, firing Zoe a look designed to convey the seriousness of what she was trying to say, though she couldn’t help the smile that surfaced on her own face, “we would like you to join us.”

  Zoe folded her arms and regarded Ellen with a look that said, Of course you want to join us.

  Katie smiled and nodded enthusiastically.

  “But you need to understand the risks before you decide.”

  Penny took a seat by the fire pit and motioned for Ellen to do the same.

  When Zoe and Katie were seated as well, Penny began to speak.

  They took turns, picking up the narrative from one another.

  They told Ellen their story.

  * * *

  The night ended on a hopeful, almost jovial note. Penny forgot for the night that she was angry with their benefactor, and telling and rehearing all they had been through reminded her of how much she treasured Zoe and Katie. Indeed, all three girls seemed to have gotten past their sleep-deprived grumpiness. The mood in the hollow was friendlier than it had been in weeks. And as their story came to a close with Penny telling about the making of the circle, even Ellen’s initial anxiety seemed to have gone.

  She relaxed and smiled encouragement as they passed off the story from one to the next, and when the story was finished, Penny thought Ellen had to restrain herself from clapping. She didn’t seem to have any doubts left. She’d seen too much that day, felt the possibilities when she’d held the wand for herself.

  “Can I have some time to think about it?”

  “Time to think about it?” Zoe repeated this as if it were the most ridiculous request she’d ever heard.

  “This isn’t like joining the cheerleading squad,” Ellen said. “And that was more of a commitment than I wanted to make when they asked me.”

  Katie nodded and said, “We won’t push you into it. You know we want you to join … you’ve already passed the tryouts.”

  “What is the cheerleading squad,” Ronan asked, as if hearing about a potential rival for the first time.

  “Popular girls in uniform skirts,” Zoe said dismissively. “Waving their pom-poms at boys with padded shoulders.”

  Ellen nodded her agreement with Zoe’s assessment, and Ronan seemed satisfied.

  “You should take some time,” Penny said. “You already know we tend to attract trouble.”

  “That’s not entirely accurate, Little Red,” Ronan said. He stood on his high perch above the girls and stretched before leaping down to join them. “Trouble was already coming. This town was lucky you girls were here to meet it.”

  “I don’t know where I’d be right now if you two hadn’t saved me that night.” Katie sounded uncharacteristically grave. She faced Ellen. “You were at Tovar’s show, too. For all we know you might have been the next to vanish.”

  “When trouble comes again,” Ronan said, walking right up to Ellen, who for a wonder didn’t try to shrink away from him. All four girls were listening eagerly. “Four ready wands would certainly be better than three. And it is coming.”

  He sprinted for the creek, leapfrogging from the ash’s arching roots to the stone ledge on the other side. He disappeared into his cave.

  “He’s an odd thing, isn’t he?” Ellen said, smiling.

  “You have no idea,” Katie said.

  A moment later he emerged with something in his mouth. He leapt the rushing waters of Little Canyon Creek again and stopped at Ellen’s feet, dropping a small mirror.

  Ellen recognized it immediately and bent to pick it up. “I had one of these, but it disappeared last winter.”

  Turning safely away from Ellen, Ronan winked at th
e others. Penny wondered how many homes he’d had to burgle to find them all.

  “Keep it with you,” Ronan said. “If you need us, whisper one of our names into it. If we need you, we’ll do the same.”

  Penny, Zoe and Katie each held up their own.

  Ellen nodded in apparent appreciation. “Like a cell phone without time limits?”

  A minute later Ellen stepped through the door and back into her own dark room. She paused just beyond the threshold, turned back to study the others, then shook her head in wonder. She closed the door.

  “So,” Zoe said, turning back to Penny with an air of getting back to some important and almost forgotten business. “When do our flying lessons start?”

  * * *

  Back in bed now, just starting to drift off, Penny heard someone whisper her name from her bedside table. She yawned, stretched to turn on her lamp, and found Ellen’s face looking at her from the mirror.

  “Sorry … I couldn’t sleep.”

  “It’s okay,” Penny said, hiding another jaw-stretching yawn behind a hand before picking the mirror up and lying down with it. “Have you decided?”

  “No,” Ellen said, and Penny thought it pained her to say the word. Penny thought she understood Ellen a little better now than she had earlier that day. Ellen was popular without being a joiner, unconditionally friendly and outgoing to almost everyone. She strived for harmony, even within the chaos of emotion and uncertainty of a teenage girl’s life. She didn’t like conflict, and she sensed the coming conflict as well as they did.

  “No, you’re not joining us, or no, you haven’t decided?” Penny forced a smile to show that whatever her answer, Penny was okay with it.

  Ellen hesitated.

  “It’s okay to say no to something you don’t want, Ellen. If you can’t get comfortable with the word No, then you’ll spend your life always trying to please everyone else and you’ll never be happy.”

  Ellen seemed on the verge of saying something, then closed her mouth.

  “It’s also okay to say Yes to something you want, even if it opens you up to risk.” Listen to me, Penny thought. I sound like Yoda. “Every day you get out of bed is a risk, and sometimes trouble finds you whether you want it or not. That’s when you need friends … good friends.”

  Ellen was silent, seeming to consider Penny’s words.

  “Whether you say yes or no, we are your friends.”

  “When you first came here … you and Zoe, no one accepted you. Even Kat was mean to you, but it seemed like it didn’t matter to you.”

  Penny could have corrected her. Of course it had mattered. Those first few months at Dogwood School had been horrible.

  “You two had each other even before all that magic stuff.”

  Penny waited. She sensed the point of Ellen’s late-night call was close.

  “I’ve always had a lot of friends, but no one has ever been that important to me.” She turned her face away from Penny’s. “I’ve never been that important to anyone.”

  “Is that why you’ve been coming around?” Penny asked the question without thinking and instantly wished she hadn’t.

  Ellen blushed a little, then shrugged.

  Penny opened her mouth to say something, anything to ease her embarrassment, and another yawn took control of it.

  “I should let you go to bed,” Ellen said, and Penny felt her retreating from the subject. She was relieved. The ability to make intelligent, or even intelligible, conversation was quickly deserting her.

  “Come by anytime you want.”

  “Okay,” Ellen said, finally looking Penny in the face again. She smiled, then faded from the mirror.

  Penny fumbled the mirror back on her nightstand, and sleep took her.

  * * *

  Late night or not, Penny awoke at just after six the next morning. A quarter-hour of fruitless flopping in bed later, she kicked her sheets aside and rose, grumpily admitting defeat. She knew what was keeping her awake; she’d dreamt about it for the few hours of sleep she’d managed that early morning and could think of nothing else now that she was awake. She briefly considered taking a quick shower and changing into real clothes, but decided she didn’t have the patience. It wouldn’t matter to the people in the mirror anyway. They were all from a distant past when she didn’t yet exist. She could see them just as easily in her pajamas and with her hair in a tangle.

  She leaned over the edge of her bed and slid the mirror out from under it. Sitting cross-legged on her unmade bed, she pulled the old photo album from under her pillow and rifled through it. There were so many to choose from that she had trouble picking one to start. She settled at last on the picture of her pregnant mother with her stern, serious aunt.

  Penny pulled the photo from its sleeve. “Hi, Mom. Hi, Aunt Nancy.”

  She placed the photo in the center of the Conjuring Glass, and waited.

  Nothing happened.

  Penny picked it up, turned it over to see if there was something stuck to the back, something coming between the photo and the mirror, then placed it carefully in the center again.

  Again, nothing.

  “Why won’t you work?” She closed her eyes and focused on her first encounter with the strange mirror’s previously unknown ability. “What am I doing wrong?”

  She tried to recall as clearly as she could her actions and emotions the last time, if she had spoken to the photographs or the mirror, and the sense of her previous sadness came flooding back into her. Wanting to see herself, her face, in the same frame as her mother and father. Wanting to see what they might look like together if things hadn’t gone so badly wrong the night she was born.

  Blinking back tears even though no one else had been there to see them.

  She felt a blush of embarrassment. She hated to cry, and she had been crying a lot lately.

  Penny recalled blinking back tears and wishing she could have known them.

  She had wished.

  Penny wished again, and the past came alive for her.

  Penny watched as small moments in her mother’s and aunt’s lives played out in front of her. There were no great revelations that morning, but the smaller revelations, the proofs that her family had once lived, were just as important to her.

  When the larger revelations came she would share them, and the newly discovered ability of the Conjuring Glass, with the others, but these moments were just for her.

  * * *

  Penny didn’t realize how much time had passed until she heard a knock on the inside of her wardrobe door and snapped her head toward it. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw the numbers on her nightstand clock. It was almost ten o’clock.

  The knock came again, and when Penny didn’t hasten to answer, the door began to inch open.

  Penny slid to the edge of her bed and threw the top sheet over the moving images in the mirror—she was on her fifth photograph now, having watched the previous four several times each before moving to the next.

  Her feet hit the floor as Zoe’s face appeared through the partially open door, and she manufactured a yawn, as if she’d only just awakened.

  Penny didn’t understand why she wanted to keep the photographs’ stories secret, if even just for now, but the desire was strong and she couldn’t deny it.

  “Zoe,” she scolded, though she was obviously not convincing. Zoe only grinned at her, unabashed. “Call first, okay.”

  “I have been,” Zoe protested. “You weren’t answering.”

  Penny did a quick about-face to the nightstand, where her mirror lay only inches from the glowing digits of her alarm clock.

  The time had flown by fast while she’d been lost in her mother’s past. Apparently her awareness had flown with it.

  “You did?”

  “Course I did. I don’t just barge in like some people I could name.” Zoe’s grin wilted slowly as she regarded Penny more closely. “Have you been crying?”

  “No,” Penny protested lamely, wiping at the corner of her eye
s for any telltale signs. They were there, of course. “I have allergies.”

  Zoe looked unconvinced but let it drop.

  “Must have been sleeping hard,” Zoe said, throwing the door wide open and stepping through.

  In the background, Penny saw Katie on her knees at the creek’s edge, bent low over the flowing water, her arm immersed to the elbow and searching for her makeshift net with their ash sticks.

  “I thought Kat was still grounded,” Penny said, surreptitiously shoving the old photo album back beneath her pillows when Zoe turned to regard Katie.

  “Oh, yeah ... she’s still grounded.” Zoe put a hand over her mouth to stifle laughter. “Her dad’s out of town today and Michael talked her mom into letting her out.”

  “I’d like to have a big brother like that,” Penny said, a little enviously.

  Zoe went slightly redder in the cheeks and turned away.

  “And what about you,” Penny said, rising at last. “Aren’t you supposed to be a full-time nurse now?”

  Zoe was not amused by this. The tone of her reply was crisper than usual. “Grandma’s at church. Then lunch with The Elders.” Zoe had adopted Susan’s pet name for the troupe of old town women with obvious delight. “Then Bingo at the Senior Center.”

  “So you’re free for most of the day.” Penny somehow thought Zoe getting almost a full day away from her grandma would be a cause for celebration, but Zoe wasn’t showing it.

  “Yep,” she said, then in an obvious effort to change the subject, continued: “Come on, let’s go already! We have stuff to do today!”

  “Stuff?” Penny stood confused for a moment. She didn’t remember any specific stuff planned for the day. She had planned on spending time in her basement, searching for more treasures like the photo album.

  “You know …,” Zoe glared meaningfully at her, her eyes flicking for a second to the trapdoor in her floor and the folding ladder that led to the second floor, where Susan might even now be getting ready for the day. She whispered, though with such force it didn’t make much difference. “We’re making new wands today, and you’re going to teach us how to fly.”