by J L Collins
Ash shook his head and got back up. “I’ve got some things to do. I’ll let you know when dinner’s ready tonight. Feel free to make yourself some lunch.” And with that he was gone.
Goldie clicked her beak together. “Don’t pay attention to him. He’s not into anything that doesn’t have to do with breaking the curse. Trust me.”
I shrugged.
“Okay, so before we were interrupted I was saying that these little parties have been going on for a long time. I mean before the frozen spell on everyone, of course. Victor himself was one of the biggest players in town, and he was most definitely in love with her. I did find out that he wasn’t a fan of the parties after a while, so he stopped throwing them and didn’t attend when his buddies did. And ironically enough, one of the other gentlemen, who I couldn’t determine because no one ended up bringing up his name, threw this celebratory party after everyone woke up from their eleven-year-long sleep. On the very same night Beatrice was murdered.”
Well, that took the wind right out of my sails. “Wait, wait. So you’re saying that the last gig was on the same night that Beatrice was killed. Which means she was probably busy entertaining while Beatrice was being, well, murdered?”
“Oh. Well, yes, I suppose I am. I don’t really know what time or anything though.”
I grit my teeth together. “Great. Here I was thinking we’d found the real main suspect.” I spun the pen around on the table. “Well. Constance probably wasn’t involved in what happened to Beatrice. But,” I began, writing down one last sentence, “It definitely warrants a look into what she was doing. The time might not match up and for all we know, she might have been the killer after all.”
Goldie nodded. “So we keep her on the list for now?”
Back in the kitchen, the sound of the microwave went off. My stomach grumbled and I pushed the notebook away.
“For now.”
16
A Twist Of Fate
When Fatima said my earth powers were weak, admittedly, I was offended. She’d explained to me that out of the four powers, earth is the hardest to maneuver. It’s literally the most solid of them and therefore needs more strength to handle it. So I thought that made me strong.
It had to mean something to have the strongest of the elemental powers, didn’t it? Otherwise what was the point?
Apparently there was no point.
Three days in a row I found myself poofing away to Fatima’s via Ash to officially start my magic lessons. And three days in a row I was ready to pull out my hair.
“This. Isn’t. Working.” I grit my teeth, trying to hold the image of digging a grave in my head. Sweat beaded across my forehead and upper lip, and I was pretty sure if I concentrated any harder I was going to need to excuse myself back inside.
We were standing in the clearing by her cottage, while Fatima had me working on my ability to shift dirt. There was roughly a grave-sized patch of it that had been cleared of all snow and branches, leaving just the barren ground underneath for me to work with. Around it she had black candles lit to help protect my power from getting too squirrelly.
Not that it seemed to be an issue. I could hardly move the first inch or so of dirt. It was like getting a shovel stuck in rocky soil. There was no getting past the first layer, and even that was iffy.
“Draw out the shape in your mind. Picture not a shovel or spade, but an invisible force digging into the ground around the edges, cutting it out,” she said calmly. Her collectedness was starting to get to me.
“I’m trying,” I said through my teeth. The wet ground squelched along the edges, pulling away from the shape of the rectangle Fatima had cleared. The muddy corners closest to me seemed to be curling up, peeling back and revealing the even darker soil underneath…
I waved my hands out in front of me again, picturing myself digging my hands into the ground and peeling it back like a page instead of using the shovel idea. It worked, and the rest of the first six inches or so of muddy earth ripped up from the ground and hovered like a blanket. My eyes felt like they were going to pop out of my head though, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was even holding, and it all fell back down to the ground.
“Oh come on!” I wanted to tear the dirt from the ground with my bare hands—maybe I’d actually get somewhere then.
“You will get the hang of it, Indie,” Fatima finally said, giving me a minute to get the swearing and the kicking of the ground out of my system.
I sighed. “It doesn’t feel that way. What if this is the best I can do? It figures that I find out I’m a witch. A sucky witch.”
Fatima had the decency to take it seriously. “That’s not true. You just need to practice. And… I may have to have our resident researcher on hand to help us figure out if there’s more to it than meets the eye.”
“Do we really have to tell him? Isn’t this something we can keep between just us girls?” I said. Ash hasn’t exactly been forthright with me, so why do I need to tell him about all of this?
She put her arm around my shoulder. “He knows a lot more about magic than he lets on. It might be worth it to ask.”
I hung my head. “I don’t get it. Why is this so much more difficult for me? Or is it? Maybe I’m just not strong enough to wield my power. Wow… I really just said that.” Strong enough to wield my power? I shook my head. “I sound like a plot for the latest Marvel movie.”
Fatima giggled. “I don’t know what you mean by that, but I do know you sound like you belong in a Tolkien novel.”
“Fair enough. Listen, I would really rather not share my fails with Ash if I can help it. I already get enough of his side-eye as it is. And that’s when I actually see him.”
“If you insist. Let’s get back to it, shall we?” She gestured to the mess I made. “Come on.”
Shaking out as much irritation as I could, I focused intently on the mud and dirt. Think shaved ice this time. Or peeling a potato back at the farm. Just a thin layer will do…
Just like before, the layer of mud peeled back again, hovering even higher this time above the ground. I held my shaking hands out, trying to hold on to the feeling of controlling the mud. I threw my hands to the right and the mud fell to the ground in a mucky wet heap, splashing everywhere including my face.
That was it. “UGH! Work stupid powers! Just work!” I bent over and shrieked at the mud.
Fatima gasped behind me, but I didn’t care. Everything that had built up in me over the past week and a half came to a head, and embarrassing hot tears rolled down my cheeks as I caught my breath.
“Indie!” she said in a hushed tone. “Do that again!”
I glanced back at her, biting my lip. I was not going to sit here and cry like a child who couldn’t get their new shiny toy to work. “Do what again?”
“Scream!” She pointed back to the patch of mud putting up one heck of a fight. “Do it.”
It wasn’t hard. I let out another outraged yell, directing it at the stupid mud. But I stumbled backward as the small flickering flames of each of the black protection candles shot up a good two feet around the muddy rectangle.
The flames died back down.
“Did you—? Did I?” I shook my head. I expected maybe a twinge of the earth, but not that. Not that.
Fatima rushed up to me. “I think you did. It certainly wasn’t me.”
“But how? I thought you said that everyone has one specific element that they can manipulate? I did something with the sand that one day, right? I wasn’t imagining it,” I said, staring at the candles. They didn’t look like candles to me anymore, instead they looked like new possibilities. My heart leapt.
She held her hand up to her head covering, just as bewildered as I was. “I mean yes, I saw it too. And I saw what happened just now… This doesn’t make sense. Unless…”
My eyebrows rose, knitting together under the blue strands of hair pasted against my damp forehead. “Unless?”
With her hands on her hips, she went to inspect
the candles, picking one of the candlesticks up with interest. “It’s completely unprecedented. I’ve never heard of it before but… the reason why your earth power is limited might be because you also have the power to control fire as well. Dual powers, if you will.”
I blinked. “That’s… I don’t even know what to say. Is that bad? Or should I be worried?” I definitely didn’t feel worried. I could work through not having stronger earth powers if they were this much of a strain, though it would suck. But having the ability to handle both earth and fire powers felt, well, limitless.
And in the sea of uncertainty this Taurus has been living in, it’s something of a Hail Mary.
We sat down at Fatima’s table, neither of us sure of what to say. And when someone knocked on the door both of us jumped.
“Come in!” she shouted, giving me a wary look.
Ash pulled off his cloak, already starting up a conversation before he even made it all the way inside. “If I have to listen to another person complain about missing the 4th of July Gala, I’m going to lose my mind. Oh, hello.” He stared at the two of us, his expression immediately turning somber. “What’s happened?”
She gave me look silently asking me if I was okay with sharing the truth with him.
I nodded. This wasn’t something I’d be able to hold back one way or the other.
Fatima told him about the earth magic lessons, to which of course he had something to say.
“I can look into it more. But that doesn’t seem to be the problem, based on the way your eyes are bugging out of your heads.”
“It wasn’t just that. She got upset and…”
“I shrieked like a banshee because I was upset and something happened to the candles, I guess. I wasn’t paying attention. So Fatima had me do it again. The flames on those protection candles shot up. Way up. Twice.” I watched his face, waiting for any kind of reaction. I wasn’t at all surprised when Ash looked away to stare into the fireplace.
“So she can control two elements. And you’re sure she was able to manipulate the sand before? Maybe it was a trick of the light or—”
Fatima gave him a dirty look. “Yes, Ash. I’m not a novice at this, you know.” I looked down at the ground, stifling the smile on my face. For some reason, it felt good to see him smacked down a bit.
He cleared his throat as he stood up. “All right. Then we have a problem, I’m afraid.”
The blood drained from my face. “What kind of problem? I don’t understand why having two types of magic would be bad.” What was I missing here?
“It’s not the powers per se, though given the fact that no one has ever had that kind of power we can’t truly know what it could mean. I’m talking about everyone else’s reaction.”
Fatima nodded then sighed. “I was thinking of that too. If the town finds out Indie can manipulate more than one element… who knows what kind of reaction they’ll have? What kind of stories they’ll try to come up with?”
“They’re mainly modern thinkers, but it is a small town after all. And this is certainly unprecedented. I worry that they’ll use this as an excuse to not only use her in the murder case, but the Special Council, they make the rules here. If they feel threatened by Indie in any way…” Ash said, pacing back and forth in front of the fire.
A sweep of panic clung to me. I hadn’t thought of any of that. All I was focused on was trying to figure out how to work my powers, putting not only the investigation aside, but the Special Council too. Everything that had been pinned against me since I first stepped foot in town was about to get drastically worse. I was already worried about being framed for Beatrice’s death. I’d be an even bigger target.
If they found out.
“We’ll just have to keep this between ourselves, then,” I said softly, glancing between the two of them. “If they don’t find out then they can’t hold it against me.”
Fatima leaned back. “She’s right.”
“Then we’ll do our best to keep it under wraps. But Indie, the Special Council won’t be put off for long. They’re going to want answers now that they know Fatima has been working with you. Don’t look at me like that!” he said, frowning at me. “I had to tell them something. If they thought you were just hanging around the library then they would’ve been suspicious. About the both of us.”
“I’m sorry, what?” I said, cocking an eyebrow at him. I didn’t much like the idea of a bunch of high-and-mighties scrutinizing me and making some kind of assumptions over what Ash and I were doing at the library.
“Exactly. Not all of them, but there are a few that seem to feel that we’re in… cahoots together. They’re not entirely sure you didn’t have something to do with the time spell and with the murder investigation… they wanted reassurance that you were being kept busy. So I told them that you found your earth power and were working on it. The truth works best in these kinds of situations. And I certainly didn’t want them to think so lowly of your… actions.”
My cheeks burned on their own accord. “Thank you for sticking up for me,” I mumbled.
“So it’s a secret. I think we can handle that,” Fatima said as she stood up and took my hand to pull me up after her. “Time to do some research.”
17
Served Him Right
“I don’t suppose there’s a Blu-ray player around here, is there?” I moved the boxes of old books out of the way, hoping that maybe I’d get lucky. “Or even a DVD player? I’ll even take a VCR, anything. I need mind-numbing entertainment.”
“Well it is a vault of the old and lost. Who knows what you might find in there,” Goldie said, fluttering down to the floor. She screeched as I dropped the next box down.
“Sorry. I don’t get why Ash has all of these boxes here, anyway. Is he trying to hide his museum of antiquities or something?” The door to the downstairs collection room had been shut, but that still left the tower of boxes in front of it to paw through.
“No idea, but maybe if you asked him he could tell you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Trying to talk to him is like talking to one of the men in my Nan’s retirement community. They’ll look at you half the time, nod sometimes, offer you a few words of disdain and then off they go to their little hobbies.”
“He can be hard to get through to, I agree. Believe me, as the town messenger I’ve had my own troubles with that,” she said as she jumped back a few feet to make way for the next box.
“Well there’s nothing here that will help.” I stacked them all back up again and scanned the rest of the basement. “You know, you keep telling me that you’re the town messenger like I’m supposed to know what that is. What does it mean to be a messenger?” It was one of the countless small things I’d been wondering about.
Flying ahead of me, Goldie headed me off at the bottom of the steps. “You never asked so I figured you didn’t care. But I can tell you about it if you’d like.”
“It’s not that I didn’t care, I just have a billion things going on in my head at any given time. You don’t exactly get into my predicament without losing your marbles,” I said, offering her a smile. “I’ll grab something to drink and you can tell me about it.”
We headed upstairs and I was pleased to see that a few of my food requests had been answered. I grabbed the bag of chips from the kitchen and took a seat, gesturing for Goldie. “So what makes you different from the familiars in town? I’ve only seen one so far, and he seemed like he was just as smart.”
“Gallows is a very wise cat, yes. All familiars are smart as you say. They have different experiences and feelings because well, they’re not humans. But the difference between me and them is their purpose. They’re meant to guide witches and wizards, and to help serve their needs.”
“They’re servants? That sounds an awful lot like classism,” I said with a frown.
But she shook her head. “No, no. It’s not quite like that. Many witches and wizards aren’t even given a familiar, they’re acquired for different reasons. S
ome need extra help with their powers, some need the moral support, some are just magically drawn to their familiars. It happens. No one really knows how familiars choose their human counterparts.”
“Huh. Okay, but what about you? You’re not tied to any one human, right?” Goldie was definitely on her own, but I could tell she had a fondness for both Ash and Fatima.
She dug her face under her wing and scratched. When she popped back up she nodded. “That’s right. As a messenger, I have free reign. I’m not supposed to be denied entrance anywhere though I don’t use that as an excuse to barge in unannounced. Usually. My job is to deliver messages and things to the people in town. Or at least it was… a lot of that changed when phones became a thing. I still deliver letters, but usually that’s just for official documents and that sort.”
“Wait. How old are you, exactly?” I eyed her, trying to make an educated guess. But that was impossible—I had no idea how long snowy owls typically lived, nor did I see any signs of aging on her. She looked like, well, a normal bird.
“If you must know, I’m… hm, carry the one… two-hundred and fifty-seven. Though I don’t look a day over five.”
My jaw dropped. “That… was not the answer I was expecting. So if you’ve been here for so long, then what brought you here in the first place? Who made you the messenger of Charming Springs?”
Goldie chuckled. “It’s a long story but basically I’m Mother Nature’s lackey. Or I was, before I told her I didn’t want anything to do with her anymore. She pretended like she didn’t care but she wasn’t happy. She was the one who brought me to life. As far as I know, I’m the only messenger around. But there are other magical towns out there so I could be wrong. What?” She narrowed her eyes at me.
“You worked for Mother Nature? The one who cursed the town to begin with?” For some reason that was the detail I clung to. “What was she like? She doesn’t strike me the type of person I’d want to be around. Which is weird because, you know, Mother Nature. Isn’t she supposed to be this serene representation of all things in nature?”