by Coralie Moss
I could do that, the listening through my feet part, and the moment I closed my eyes I understood what I needed to do.
Lifting my heels allowed the needles the brush over the scattered flower petals and other bits of nature’s detritus without getting snagged. I began to step in a tight circle, using my arms for balance, and the bottom of the ankle length, A-line dress swung out as I gained momentum.
It did not take more than a handful of steps before the weight of those hundreds of slivers of sharpened metal created a perfect blade with which to shred the plant matter. The susurration grew. I opened my eyes to peek at what was happening and saw thousands of tiny flecks floating around me and heading upward.
Tanner and Maritza stood on opposite sides of the stone circle. They too were in movement, their gazes not on me but on something only they could see. Their mouths were moving, but I could not hear their words.
I lifted my chin and opened my eyes to the sky. The same fishing net-like structure I had seen over the burial mounds wavered overhead, encasing only me. Squarish holes anchored translucent fields of light, shimmering the way wards around my house did when they were activated.
The whole thing was beautiful. I kept spinning, the needles kept cutting, and more and more bits filled the air within the bubble until they stuck like confetti to its inner surface and even to my skin.
At a tug from beneath my toes, I began to slow. The weight of the dress closed in on my sweaty legs and as my heels found the ground I’d trampled, tips of needles caught on whatever hadn’t shredded.
My dance came to a sudden stop. I stumbled, arms akimbo. The energy emanating off the interior surface of the bubble kept me upright. The little bits stayed suspended or floated downward. Tanner’s eyes were open and glowing as he stared at me. Looking to my other side, Maritza’s lips were still moving, and her eyes were closed.
I couldn’t keep my arms up any longer.
At Maritza’s clap, the net dissolved, the last of the tiny pieces fell, and the full weight of the dress pressed down on my shoulders. At a nod from the witch, Tanner stepped over the rock border, slid his hands between the straps and my skin, and lifted one then the other over my shoulders and down my arms. Taking the dress off was a little harder. The fabric clung in patches to my skin.
I stepped out, careful to avoid the sharp fringe of needles pointing every which way. Tanner and I straightened at the same and he held the dress out and away from his front. “What would like me to do with this?” he asked.
With a sweep of her hand, Maritza took charge. The dress floated toward her. “I’ll bring it to your back porch and hang it over the railing, Calliope, to let it dry before you put it away.”
“Thank you,” I said, bending to grab my clothes. My limbs were still quivering, from the exertion and the magic that had risen up through me, and the ground, the dress, the flowers, all of it. The net overhead had served to contain all that magic, perhaps intensifying its effect.
I was still humming. And I was very thirsty. “Can you get me more lemonade?” I asked Tanner. I sat on the nearest flat rock, rested my forearms on my knees and my forehead on my arms. He petted the top of my head.
“Sure,” he said. “Anything else?”
“Chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven?”
“Coming right up.”
I’m not sure how long I was sitting. Maritza had said this ritual would take only an hour. My shaky muscles said I had been in movement longer than that but time had a way of warping during magical exercises.
Feet skimming grass and the smell of chocolate prompted me to lift my head and look toward the house. Tanner was carrying my tea tray loaded with a pitcher of lemonade and a plate piled with cookies.
“How the heck did you do that?” I asked, reaching for the offered refill and downing half of it a series of swallows.
“Magic.”
I rolled my eyes and held out my hand. “May I?”
Tanner lowered the plate in front of me and I chose the biggest, most chip-laden cookie. The first bite had me closing my eyes and groaning aloud.
“Leilani made extra cookie dough and saved it to the freezer. All I had to do was cut slices and speed up the baking process.”
“You can do that?” I asked, catching a soft crumb at the corner of my mouth and urging it back with my pinky. Tanner grinned.
“You’ve been sitting here long enough for the oven to preheat. Maritza advised we let you come down at your own pace.
“She also said if you fell over you’d probably been on your own long enough.”
I crooked a finger and drew Tanner closer. “How long has she been here?”
He brushed a kiss across my temple. “An hour and a half, maybe a little more. Have another cookie and finish your drink.”
I did as he told me to. I was not the expert here and I needed the fluid and the hit of sugar to set me back on track.
The ground inside the stone circle was carpeted by a thick layer of multi-colored particles. I could smell the combined scents even over the melted chocolate coating my tongue. My senses soaked it in and with the help of the lemonade, I was sated.
“Calliope, let’s gather the particles and then I can leave you two to finish your project.”
Maritza bent over the same bag that had held the dress and extracted a fabric pouch similar to the one I had seen at the burial mounds. “Creating them is the easy part. Teaching them to follow your instructions takes practice.” She handed me the drawstring pouch. “If you will hold this open. Once it is full, pull the strings tight and keep the bag nearby for twenty-four hours. The bonding process will speed up if you give it a place on your altar.”
I stood as directed by Maritza and held the opened bag in both hands. Maritza swept the air over the newly-made particles and after a few revolutions, they began to gather in on themselves. She guided them up and in to the waiting receptacle and followed the last of her instruction.
“Thank you,” I said, weighing the bag in my hands. The pieces were not as heavy as I had imagined when I saw them all on the ground.
“In another week or so I should be available to bind you to your grimoire.” She patted the pouch. “These should be ready by then for you to create your first circle.”
With that, Maritza left.
Chapter 7
“Maritza, put that dish down. You’re making me nervous.”
My younger brother, Malvyn, the cultured and confident Enforcer for the Magical Conclave, was reduced to a nervous pup whenever our parents visited from Mexico. The stack of redware bowls responsible for giving him the vapors was produced in a village in Michoacan. Each piece, with its crimped edges, unglazed exterior, and hand-painted motif, had arrived wrapped in newspaper and embroidered squares. Our mother stashed pieces of her beloved redware in her carry-on luggage, bringing one suitcase-full whenever she visited.
“These are the newer bowls,” I reminded Malvyn. “Mama will take her vintage pieces with her to the grave, just like our ancestors.”
“As long as she doesn’t ask me to entomb her under our kitchen, she can be buried with whatever she wants.” Malvyn drew an apron out of a drawer, flicked it open, and tied it around his waist.
“What? You afraid her spirit will haunt you?” I asked.
“No, this house was built on a rock. If Mama wants the tomb treatment, we’re going to have to lift a section of the house and I doubt James will agree to that.”
“She’ll haunt you anyways. You know she’ll never forgive you for changing our last name.” After her death, Margarita Bordador would continue to opine and I would be her conduit.
I finished loading the bowls with condiments. Finely chopped white onions, cilantro, and parsley. Pickled red onion escabeche. Salsa verde and salsa fresca.
Malvyn sniffed. “Felicia said your apprentice is here.”
“Changing the topic, querido?” I asked, tucking the bowls onto a carrying tray.
His head disappeared into one o
f the side by side refrigerators. “It’s not like you to invite an apprentice to stay with you for the duration.”
“Alabastair’s referrals were stellar,” I said. Peeking over Mal’s shoulder, I pointed to the block of cotija cheese our mother had managed to smuggle past Customs. “Hand me that, will you?”
Unwrapping four layers of plastic wrap and seeing the cheese had started to crumble around the edges, I went for a larger Patamban bowl, this one decorated with facing swans. “His written essays piqued my interest much more than any of the other applicants.” I gave Malvyn my back as I waltzed toward the swinging kitchen doors. Alabastair’s responses had aroused much more than my mind, information my brother did not need to be privy to. “Besides, the Nekrosines are such stuffed shirts about their prized lineage that to have their firstborn son campaign to apprentice with me? How could I resist?”
My brother’s deep laugh sounded from the kitchen as the doors closed behind my back. I placed the loaded tray on the table set for eight, and distributed the little bowls such that everyone could access the condiments without having to overreach.
“Maritza?” I swore Malvyn could send his voice around corners.
“What?” I asked, pressing one door open with my elbow and forearm. My fingertips were coated with salsa.
“When were you planning to change? James should be here for cocktails in fifteen minutes and Leilani has promised us one of her desserts.”
My niece was showing promise. Though my brother and his husband had not fully embraced the idea that their daughter was growing into a young women—what parents ever did?—they had always encouraged her to be open to her magic. Thus far, her skills lay in the kitchen. Abuela Margarita took great pride in reminding anyone in earshot those skills came from her.
Using my position as Leilani’s aunt, I could guide her with a subtler hand. I suspected Leilani was in Imbuatrix. A shiver of anticipation fluttered over my skin whenever I pictured myself assisting with her magical education.
“I’ll go change now,” I said, willing to trade points for more time with my niece. “Who’s fetching Papi and Mama?”
Cue the eyeroll. “I shall,” Malvyn said, adding a short sigh to the eyebrow acrobatics. “Any bets on which of Papi’s four sermons are on tonight’s menu?”
I smiled at my beloved brother and patted his recently shaved and cologned cheek. “Just wait until you’re his age, visiting Leilani. Remember this feeling. Give the old man your ears. It’s the least we can do.” I pirouetted away before Malvyn could rope me into entering our parent’s wing of the house, and made my way to my rooms.
* * *
Sanctuary.
I could not live on this pile of rock year-round. My planned three-and-a-half months with Malvyn and James seemed like a crazy, murder-inducing idea when we first began negotiations. When they decided I would be provided one wing of the house, we agreed my stay would overlap with Margarita and Carlos’s twice-yearly trek to wherever their children were situated. Our sister, Moira, had died seven years ago, leaving Papa and Mama with only one choice of destination for their summer sojourn.
James and Mal had been situated on Salt Spring Island for less than five years. James, a half-witch and botanist, wanted land for his greenhouses and space to explore his magic. His dream would would have been astronomically expensive—even with my brother’s ability to manufacture coin—had they stayed in Vancouver.
Both men expressed concerns I would overstay. I expressed concerns about excessive sunshine affecting my growing necromantic powers and reminded them I would spend many daylight hours resting or absorbed in my studies.
Decomposition was my jam.
I asked for—and received—the north wing. The deck off my bedroom jutted into a stand of fir trees. Untamed patches of salal and native undergrowth cluttered the forest floor, scenting the air with decay. James had added a few bat houses to the trees, and evenings spent on the deck, in the dark, watching them swoop for bugs sent my heart pitter-patting.
Alabastair would be ensconced in the wing catty-cornered to mine.
A chime sounded near the door, followed by Malvyn’s disembodied voice. “Ten minutes to cocktails. Ten minutes.”
Gracias, hermano querido.
I divested myself of the blouse and slacks stinking of onions and herbs on the way to my walk-in closet, and dropped my bra and underwear in the laundry as I passed through to the bathroom. One minute under the showerhead was all I needed.
Eight minutes wasn’t enough time to stitch a dress together. My needles rattled their displeasure. Poor darlings had spent the entire day locked up. I lifted the lid of the oblong, black velvet case and cooed. One day, I would assemble the dress of needles I had been dreaming about my entire life. One day, soon.
Bare wood and flat stones marked the long hallway connecting the various wings of Malvyn and James’s palatial home. The tap-tap of my heels set up a hypnotic rhythm. Had the hallway been circular in design, I could have kept walking. As it was, I had to remind myself in the middle of a thought that I was not on my way to reanimating a dead body. I was having dinner with my family and my newest apprentice.
Passing a niche where a life-sized statue of Mictlantecuhtli resided, I tucked myself against the Mexican god’s torso. At the carved stone’s silent invitation to continue, I wrapped one arm around the figure’s waist, rested my palm in the uplifted hand, and closed my eyes.
Who knew the God of Death liked to dance.