I stroke remember on my thumb. Remember. Shelby.
Shelby who is Adam’s sister. My friend. My mind pushes me toward the past tense: Shelby was Adam’s sister. She was my friend. But I hold Shelby in the present tense. She lies in the Rosie patch, her hair puddled around her head in a blond swirl. She looks at the sky, encouraging Adam and me to describe what we see in the clouds. A bee lands on my cheek, and I squeal. She sits up and says, “It’s just a bee! You’re thousands of times bigger than it.” The bee flies away, and I relax into the calm that Shelby creates around us. Shelby. Shelby. Shelby. Remember.
I focus on the screen. Number one is from All’s Well That Ends Well. Just the title brings tears to my eyes.
The text is tight, small. The search term is highlighted in a pale maroon. It says, true. Oh! Because rue is part of true! I page down. True. True. True. They’re all trues! The burden lightens. I just have to look for rue in the midst of all the truth. How poetic! I smile at myself.
Constance wouldn’t have had the internet with its search boxes blinking encouragingly. She would have had thousands of pages of plays. She would have run out of time. She did run out of time.
But I won’t. I can’t.
Page down. Page down. Page down. There’s also truer and untrue. Page down. Also, cruel. And here’s misconstrues.
Finally, on page eight, here’s rue! It’s the Hamlet one.
There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. We may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference!
Ophelia. She was crazy. It’s always bugged me that Mom took my name from a crazy person’s ravings, but maybe Ophelia really knew something about herbs. Maybe Shakespeare did.
The sonnet Mr. Cates read said poems are a living record of memory. Shakespeare wrote about people to make them last forever. Constance tried to use the codex to hold on to Wilkie. Words make things real. Words remember people.
I’ll write each possible rue rhyme in the codex and let the words do battle against the void. My hand shakes as I carefully copy Ophelia’s words. I don’t want to make a mistake.
I write the last word from the passage.
Nothing happens.
I read the whole thing aloud.
Nothing.
I read the rosemary words off the back of my hand. I read the rue words and try to wrap them around the idea of Shelby.
Nothing.
My mom calls down the hallway. “Any luck?”
“Not yet,” I answer, hoping she can’t hear the despair in my voice.
“You want any help?”
Yes. Yes, I want help.
“No, thanks, Mom.” I call back. “I should do this on my own. I love you.”
“Love you too, Rosie.”
The lines from Hamlet aren’t the right words. I need to collect all the passages with rue and try them all. But what am I even trying? How do I know that reading the words aloud will do anything? Maybe I have to, I don’t know, brew a potion, or turn three times and spit, or . . . Even if I find the right words, how will I know?
It’s strange and sad to be doing this on my own. Adam should read the words while I write them down. Or the other way around. He should help me think of ways to test the words, to figure out which ones will work. He should wield his graph paper like a sword. But he doesn’t remember, and he won’t come. It’s late now, anyway, nearly midnight. I have to keep looking.
I find the next rue on page fourteen, but it’s not the right kind. It’s from Henry VI: And, in thy closet pent up, rue my shame, And ban thine enemies, both mine and thine! This is regret, not the herb. But I write it anyway, because forgetting is our enemy, and maybe the words will ban forgetting. But they don’t.
The next one, also from Henry VI, is the same meaning, more regret. And another one about regret from a play called King John. So far, Hamlet is the only one where the rue is a plant, but I’m not even halfway through the results.
Page twenty, and I’m almost at the midpoint, 400 out of 942. But . . . there’s no “next” button to click! Where are the rest of the results? I scroll up. Because there are so many results, only the first 20 pages will be displayed. But I need the rest! I need all the results!
I click on Advanced Search, and there’s a way to search for the exact word only. I should have checked this before, but it doesn’t matter. It should get me to the right rue now.
Only sixteen hits on rue. Not true or cruel or misconstrue. Just rue.
The first seven are ones I already found. The next is from Macbeth. My heart breaks into a trot. That’s the play that has a witch’s spell in it. Mom laughed and doesn’t believe it, but I know better. Adam knows better. Or he would if he remembered.
I copy the words: You’ll rue the time that clogs me with this answer. It’s regret again, but it’s Macbeth. I have to hope. I study the words on the page. Whisper them out loud.
Nothing. Nothing. And more nothing.
Okay. Next is the same meaning from Richard II. All these forgotten kings . . .
Another one from the same play. Oh! Here’s the plant. I copy out the whole passage:
Poor queen! so that thy state might be no worse,
I would my skill were subject to thy curse.
Here did she fall a tear; here in this place
I’ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace:
Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen,
In the remembrance of a weeping queen.
Curse, remembrance. This must be it! But the words just sit dumb on the page. I read them aloud. Again.
Well, of course, Shelby wouldn’t appear in my room. That wouldn’t make any sense. I press my nose to the cool windowpane, completely sure I’ll see Shelby outside.
The moon-colored snow sparkles. The road hasn’t been plowed. Adam’s footprints have long been covered over. Even my prints heading the opposite direction are softened and vanishing. The silence of the snow is a roar of emptiness and stillness and nothingness. And Shelby’s not there.
I wipe away tears with the back of my hand. The black ink there smears.
Shelby. I grab on to her and snatch at hope at the same time. She won’t appear on the street outside my house in the middle of the night! Why would she? She’ll be at home.
I grab my phone and call Adam, but his voice mail is full.
I hesitate only a second before calling the house. It’s late, but . . . I have to know.
The phone rings. I can almost hear it filling the dark house with sound, glaring in the midnight stillness.
“Hello?” Mrs. Steiner answers in a voice slurred with sleep.
Adam’s dad grumbles something I can’t understand in the background.
“I’m sorry to call so late,” I say in a rush. “Is Shelby there?”
“Shelby?” Mrs. Steiner mumbles. “You have the wrong number.”
“But . . .” I protest. “No!”
A shuffle, and then Mr. Steiner’s voice, just on the edge of angry. “There is no Shelby here.”
The line goes dead.
My hands are ice cold as I turn the pages of the codex back to the void poem. I clamp my lips between my teeth so I won’t mouth the words. I don’t look at the page straight on, like if I don’t look right at it, maybe it won’t be as powerful.
Ah, treble words of absence spoken low;
For ears of fam’ly, friend, or willful foe.
Speak thrice to conjure nothing on the spot.
Who harkens here will present be forgot.
Void and nothing. Void and nothing—all strife!
Third’s the charm. To void and nothing turn life.
Even though I didn’t read it aloud, panic seizes me. What if . . .
I cry out, “Mom?”
Her voice emerges, startled, from her room. “What?”
“Uh, nothing.” Relief makes me dizzy, and I close my eyes. Even the millisecond of thinking I might have sent her into the void leaves me breathless and untethered
from myself.
“You okay?” Concern sharpens her tone.
“Fine,” I reply. “Just . . . you were so quiet, I thought you weren’t here.”
“I’m here.”
I open my eyes and refocus on the poem. It doesn’t mention herbs or plants of any kind. It’s just words, and I guess the repetition of the words. Speak thrice.
Void and nothing. It’s terrible. It’s not death. It’s just not anything. Nothing. The family, friend, or foe is simply erased, as if he or she was never even born. Except it doesn’t quite work because you do remember them, at least for a little while. According to Constance, there is time to undo it before the person disappears into the void. But not much time.
Thirteen
MAYBE RICHARD II wasn’t the right play. I turn back to the computer.
The next four rues on the list all mean regret. But the last one is different. It’s from that play Mom mentioned, the one with the bear. The Winter’s Tale. How appropriate.
It’s the right meaning of rue. And it has rosemary too!
I copy the passage, the last one. Hope thrills through me.
For you there’s rosemary and rue; these keep
Seeming and savour all the winter long:
Grace and remembrance be to you both,
And welcome to our shearing!
I read it aloud.
Nothing happens.
I read the rosemary verse and then the rue one, like I’m solving an equation. But rosemary plus rue equals nothing.
Or they don’t equal Shelby. But they do bring traces of Shakespeare into my room.
I remember the sonnet from Mr. Cates’s class, the one about how a poem can be a “living record” of a person. I type Shakespeare and powerful rhyme into a new search box.
Here it is.
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme
“This powerful rhyme,” I whisper the words, taste them. A powerful rhyme turned Shelby and Wilkie into nothing, but another rhyme, one more powerful, could bring them back.
I repeat the lines from The Winter’s Tale and try to say remembrance with special meaning. Nothing happens. But this is it. I am completely sure. It has rosemary and rue together, and it says remembrance be to you both. This must be it, but why isn’t anything happening?
My fingers are numb, and I’m breathing quickly. I have to hold it together. I’m the only hope now. I have to do the remembering. I’m the living record.
I go back to my father’s Riverside Shakespeare and find the right place in The Winter’s Tale. Maybe getting the context will help. It’s a character called Perdita. She says For you there’s rosemary and rue. I really wish Shakespeare had more stage directions, but it seems like Perdita would hold out the herbs, clutched in her hands.
These keep seeming and savour all the winter long. Savour must mean taste or smell, like when you savor something delicious. But seeming . . . The plants seem like themselves even in the winter when they can’t grow?
Gentle plops as snow falls from the eaves outside. The snow is already melting.
I go back to the dictionary. The first definition of seeming is the action or fact of appearing to be, so I was right. Shakespeare means that rosemary and rue seem to be alive even in the winter. And the plants are what lead to grace and remembrance, so it’s like the herbs summon memory. That’s exactly what we need!
But the welcome to our shearing part I don’t get at all. Like shearing a sheep? I type shearing, and it seems to mean just cutting—like garden shears—so maybe the plants have to be cut.
Shelby disappeared on the island, in the rosemary patch. Maybe the rosemary made the poem work, so the antidote will need rosemary and rue together. Memory and regret.
We need rosemary and rue. And maybe we need to shear them.
I slap the computer closed and hurry down the hall.
“Mom?”
She’s just setting her book on her night table. “What’s up? Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Sort of,” I say. “But I was wondering . . . I mean, it might help . . . with the project . . . if I could see some real rue. The plant, you know. Is it, uh, is it the sort of thing that grows around here?”
“I don’t think so.” She yawns. “It’s more of a warm climate plant. In any case, it wouldn’t be growing in the winter.”
Desperation brings tears to my eyes, and I turn my head so she won’t notice.
She reaches over to turn out the light. “I suppose you could look for a sample in the herbarium at the university.”
I stare into the dark and try to keep my voice light. “Herbarium?”
“Sure.” She resolves into a grainy shape as my eyes adjust. “They have clippings of hundreds of different plants. It’s in Goodsell—you know, the biology building. On the top floor. You can go tomorrow, if you want.”
This is too good to be true!
“Night, Rosie.”
“Good night, Mom.”
Following Constance’s example, I leave the bathroom light off as I brush my teeth and stare into the night. The snow reflects the streetlights and the sliver of crescent moon. The limbs of the pine tree just by the window quiver, and a clump of snow drops to the ground. Already the white piles on our neighbor’s lawn furniture have the rounded edges they get after a couple of days of melting. There’ll still be plenty of snow for sledding in the morning, but Mom was right. It won’t last more than a day.
As I wash my face, a memory rises to the surface of my mind. Sledding in the grove with Adam and . . . someone else I don’t remember. The other person pushed us down the hill in a big inner tube, and we tipped over at the bottom, and snow filled my mouth, and it tasted sharp and then melted on my tongue, and I was weirdly aware of my tongue being a hot thing.
I rub my hands and face dry.
In the brightness of the overhead light in my room, I frown at my hands. I didn’t get them really clean. Little tendrils of black curl over a faint gray smear, but I’m too tired to go back and scrub harder.
The phone wakes me.
“Hey, Rosie!” Adam’s voice has that I-have-a-plan quality. “Are you ready? We’re going to the grove. The snow’s melting fast, so we need to get out there.”
“Okay.” I stretch. “Who’s coming?”
“Micah and Alex and Kendall. Maybe Jamie and Celia.”
“Wait for me.” I sit up, swing out of bed. “I can be at your house in ten minutes.”
I throw on yesterday’s clothes, run downstairs, and shove myself into my snow gear. Grab a banana. Shout goodbye to Mom and trot down to Adam’s.
The sidewalk is already clear in patches, but there’s still at least a foot of snow on the grass. At the end of the block, the river races past, high and fast.
We hurry to the university, pulling the green comet and the purple dish behind us.
“The best sleds always have names,” Adam says to Micah, Jamie, and Celia as they meet us at the base of the hill.
“Of course,” Micah agrees. “This is La Bala.” He gestures toward his sled, a long red rocket-shaped thing.
“What’s that mean?” I ask.
“Bullet,” he answers. Then he’s running up the hill, and the rest of us follow.
I tear down the hill on the purple dish, throwing myself to the side to avoid a big tree.
I trudge back to the top, and Adam and I go down together on La Bala.
“Woo-hoo!” he cries.
We coast almost all the way to the road.
“That was awesome!” I scramble out. “Let’s go again.”
We trek to the top of the hill. With the pressure of the sleds, the melting slope is super slippery.
“Treacherous!” I grin at Adam.
He smiles back. Nothing like snow for providing great adventures.
And I slip. I land on my side. A hard kernel of something slams into my hip.
Adam drops next to me. “Are you okay
? Rosie?”
I roll onto my back. “I’m fine.”
He helps me up. And then he half runs, half tramps to the top of the hill.
I press my hand against my hip. Something in my pocket jabbed into me. I yank off my mitten with my teeth and pull a piece of paper from my jeans. It’s damp and hangs limp in my hands as I unfold it.
I frown as I read aloud, “Rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray, love, remember.”
I suck in a lungful of the damp, warming air. I do remember. But I had forgotten.
“Adam!” I call after him. The snow won’t let me run, and I slip again before I get to the top of the hill. Breathless and coated in clumps of snow that cling to my snow pants and my coat, I shove the paper at Adam. “Read this. Aloud.”
As he reads, the color drains from his cheeks. He looks at me over the paper. He grasps my arm and whispers, “Shelby.”
“Shelby.” I say it in a louder voice, trying to make it sound real and normal. I have the vaguest image of a nice girl with long hair, but she wanders away from me.
“Shelby.” I drag her back from the void.
“We forgot.” Adam’s eyes are wide. “But the rosemary rhyme makes us remember.”
“And rue!” It comes back to me like a room suddenly flooded with light. The computer search. The herbarium! “Rosemary and rue bring remembrance. It’s another Shakespeare spell,” I say. “We need to get rosemary and rue.”
Adam frowns. “What’s rue?”
The rue verse tumbles out of my mouth. “Rue is another plant. My mom says it doesn’t grow here, but they’ll have some, like a dried sample, in the herbarium at the university.” I explain, and I tug Adam toward the path. Goodsell is just over the crest of the hill.
“What’s an herbarium?” he asks. He looks stunned.
“I guess it’s like a library of plants.”
“Hey!” Micah calls. “Where are you going?”
“Herbarium,” Adam answers. He doesn’t seem at all aware that this is a totally weird place for us to be going.
The Rosemary Spell Page 12