Stop and Spell the Roses

by Stacey Alabaster

  Just when I was about to give up hope of ever escaping the garden and was starting to consider digging a ditch to hide in, Indy appeared out of nowhere.

  There was a glow around her, and when one of the hail balls tried to hit her, it bounced off her.

  “Ruby,” she called and led me to the spot in the hedge maze where the hidden door was located. “Pull on the latch!” she said to me, using her paw to point the way.

  I was soaking wet by the time I reached the other side. Back in the maze, I tried to catch my breath as I huddled underneath one of the park benches that had been placed there. The storm was easing off a little, but I was still glad to be on the other side, away from the falling trees.

  “I knew you could transport yourself places,” I said to Indy as she joined me under the bench.

  She let down her protective force field, and the glow around her slowly dimmed. She explained. “Only when you are in grave danger,” she said. “That is one of the tasks of a familiar. I would never just leave you stranded when your life was in danger.”

  What? My life had been in danger?

  Just like the text messages warned.

  It seemed like the storm had come to a complete stop. All of a sudden, there was silence.

  I poked my head outside our little makeshift cave to peek up at the sky, which had suspiciously cleared.

  “Looks like we’re out of danger . . .” I started to say.

  Then I wondered if we were in the eye of the storm, and that was why I couldn’t see any clouds.

  “Aren’t you coming out?” Indy asked. She wrapped her tail around herself, purred, and then walked lazily out from underneath the bench. “We are in the clear.”

  “I’m not sure we are,” I said.

  “Oh, we are,” she said firmly. “I made sure of that.”

  It was a long, shaky walk back down the cobblestone path as Indy and I made our way into town. I prepared to encounter the worst as we got into my car and headed back toward my place on the mountain on the other side of Swift Valley. But it was even worse than I’d imagined. There were overturned trees covering the roads, and flash flooding had closed both the major intersections in town, diverting all traffic to the back roads where cars were honking angrily at each other.

  Police cars and fire engines sped past on the other side, and by the time we finally got home an hour later, they were the only traffic still on the road. You couldn’t hear anything over the squealing of sirens that evening.

  My farm hadn’t been hit as hard as some others, but the power was out. I didn’t mind too much, as long as we still had a roof over our head.

  Late in the evening, while I was feeding Indy, Taylor came in the back door. He told me that he had managed to get all the animals safely inside the barn before the worst part of the storm hit. He had risked his own safety to make sure that none of the cows or chickens suffered.

  I reached out to Taylor and gave him a hug. “You’re a good kid, Taylor.” As long as everyone, including the animals, was in one piece, I didn’t care about the minor things such as the cracked tiling on the roof and the dripping in the laundry. None of that mattered as long as no one was hurt.

  I gave Indy a super long pet before I went to bed, just happy that we had all escaped as well as we had.

  But I didn’t realize the full extent of the damage the storm had done to Swift Valley. Not until the following morning, when I woke up and fried an egg on the gas stove. Then Indy said that she had a trick for turning on the TV, but that her powers would only work for a little while. So I had to quickly pick a channel and pay attention.

  “Can’t I use the power to turn on my hair dryer instead?” I asked. “I have a frizzy mess going on here, thanks to having to drip dry.”

  But she assured me that I was going to need to see what was happening with the outside world. So I agreed.

  I almost wished I hadn’t.

  I didn’t know how many people would even be seeing the broadcast that morning. The only people who would be able to view it would be people who the news didn’t directly affect. Kinda ironic if you asked me.

  The news said that the town was still without any power at all thanks to the large number of fallen lines, and that power might not be restored for a couple of days, given the extent of the damage to the infrastructure. Indy was sitting on the sofa beside me as we both watched the announcement. Roads were closed and several people had been taken to hospital thanks to the flooding and the fallen tree branches.

  But the worst part was the shots of the town itself.

  Shops had been completely destroyed and flattened. One news agency had been so badly flooded that all the stock inside had been destroyed. The pizza place roof was smashed open and would take months to repair.

  Indy needed to shut off her power supply, and thus, the TV. It was taking all her energy to keep it on. This was not a skill I had leaned so far, so I couldn’t take over from her. The screen went black.

  “I suppose you won’t bother going into work today, seeing as there’s no power in town.” Indy curled up into a ball, and I could see that her eyelids were drooping. Literally all of her energy had been drained.

  “Detective work doesn’t require a power supply,” I said, jumping up because there was no way that I was going to miss a full day of work. Or even be late. The town needed me. We were in crisis. I was going to do whatever I could.

  I was surprised to see Vicky waiting for me in front of the office. She had this strange look on her face, like she was somehow blaming me for what had happened. Around us, there were tipped-over garbage cans and twigs and branches from trees lying dangerously across the footpath.

  Vicky slowly turned her face up to look at me. “See what bad luck brings us?”

  10

  Was it true? Was it possible for an entire town to be experiencing bad luck?

  I had never believed in the curse that the text messages warned about, but looking around at the debris and ruin of Swift Valley, I was starting to. Even if it went against my better common sense.

  By that stage, pretty much all eight thousand people in the town of Swift Valley had received the text message.

  And even if as many as half of them had passed them on—against my advice, mind you—that was still a lot of bad luck to go around. And I felt like the texts themselves were a curse, even if they had been passed on. They had caused so much fear and paranoia that it didn’t matter if the threats were ever actually acted on.

  “No work today,” Vicky said, standing in front of the door.

  “Well, I kinda agree, actually,” I said, looking around at the mess. “The town needs us today.”

  She shook her head. “Not the town, Ruby. Our fellow witches need us.”

  Geri’s home and garden had been hit the hardest of anywhere in Swift Valley. Probably because the storm had come in from that direction—the garden had literally taken the brunt of it all.

  I mean, I had been there at the time, and even I hadn’t realized how bad the damage was.

  Geri was on her front porch. She dropped the rake she was holding when she saw me and ran over to me. She was surprised to see me still alive.

  “Ruby,” she said, gripping me by the shoulders. “I thought you were dead.” Her bottom lip began to tremble.

  I was shocked. “Er, you did?”

  “Oh, because you weren’t answering your phone, and I never saw you come back last night. I thought that you had been trapped inside the maze,” she said, look both distraught and overjoyed to see me all in one piece. “I tried to search for you, but the storm was too violent. One of the trees almost fell on me! Oh, I never would have forgiven myself for leaving you all alone up there if you had been hurt!”

  “No power to charge my phone,” I said.

  I let her hug me.

  Were those tears in her eyes? “I—I will show you what is left of the garden,” she said in a low voice and led both Vicky and me down the cobblestone path, her rake still abandon
ed in front of her porch. Maybe no amount of raking was going to be able to soothe her nerves today.

  The cobblestone was still slippery from the rain, and Vicky slipped a few times—eventually she just looped her arm through mine for support until we reached the part of the hill where it dipped back down again.

  The Secret Garden.

  Not so shining and royal any longer.

  Half of the hedge maze had been completely flattened—the back half where the storm had torn through. And the force of the hedge falling had taken down all the trees on the inside garden. It was just total ruin.

  Geri was tearful as she told us how much of the crop had been destroyed. All the precious herbs that the witches used in their spells. She said she had never seen a storm like it in her three hundred years on Earth.

  Vicky shot me a look. “That’s because it wasn’t just any old regular storm,” she said.

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it—it was a curse storm,” I said as we reached the front of the maze. Well, what was left of it, anyway. The gold gate was remarkably still standing upright, but when I reached out to touch the hedge, it was no longer spongy, but dry and brittle and without life. It was like frostbite had bitten the whole thing overnight.

  Vicky shivered a little as we stepped closer to the gate. “I don’t come up here much,” she whispered just to me while Geri was out of earshot. “When I come to get my herbs, I tend to get them in bulk, so I only need to make the venture once a year or so . . . this place gives me the major creeps,” she said, shivering and rubbing her arms as she looked around.

  “I get what you mean,” I said, “But I also think it is pretty cool.”

  Or at least, it had been. There was almost nothing left of the maze, nor the garden.

  “What does this mean for us as a coven?” Vicky asked when Geri came back.

  Geri sighed very heavily and shook her head. “We are going to have to be frugal for a little while going forward, girls.” Her voice was quite grave. “We are on rations now, as far as herbs go. So only make a brew if completely necessary.” She patted Vicky on the arm. “But you don’t need to worry too much, Vicky, as you picked enough yarrow to last a year when you were here two weeks ago. You might have to share some of that with the other witches, at least until we can regrow.”

  “Ha-ha, of course,” Vicky said in a weird, high-pitched laughing way as Geri shuffled away, telling us we could hang around a bit if we needed to, or felt the urge to help with the cleanup effort.

  Vicky was pale as she pulled me aside and whispered to me. “Ruby! Remember that secret ingredient that I put in the hand creams? Well, that was yarrow.” She was breathing heavily. “And do you know how much of it you need to turn human women’s hands into magical witches’ hands?”

  I could feel my eyes grow wide. I recalled that’s what she had used, but I hadn’t realized just how much she had used. “So, you have none left?” I whispered to her.

  “I thought there was pretty much a limitless supply of magical herbs in this very garden,” Vicky whispered, her voice wavering.

  “Oh no! Vicky!”

  “Now I’m going to have to come clean about what I have done!” Vicky said.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Geri, who was halfway down the cobblestone, and wondered if we should call her back and rip off the Band-Aid. But then I had an idea.

  “Well, maybe there is still some hidden in the garden that Geri didn’t see,” I said, hurrying back toward the gate that we had drifted away from. “If we can find it and pick it and take it home to replace what you used, then Geri will be none the wiser.” I winked at Vicky. “Plus, I know exactly where it is. I saw it yesterday.”

  Vicky didn’t look so sure. “It seems to switch location every time I come in here,” she said as we walked in through the gate and entered the maze. “And that’s on a good day.”

  “Maybe it’s just an optical illusion,” I said, trying to be logical, but I didn’t really understand it either; the way the maze worked. It was like entering a dream world—each time it was familiar, but things were never in quite the same place or the same shape.

  At least until you were finally out of the maze and back in the clearing. That part made sense. I exhaled in relief when we reached it.

  But my relief didn’t last long. It was even more of a disaster zone than I had imagined. All the bright colors of the flowers had been crushed. And the rain and hail had devastated it. It looked less like a magical garden and more like a war zone.

  The disappointment was splattered all over Vicky’s face. I didn’t think there was much chance of finding any usable yarrow, or any usable anything, but she forged her way over to the far side and started digging through the wreckage. She picked up branches and threw them out of the way so she could search the ground underneath.

  I raced over to help her, solely because the mess needed to be cleaned up anyway and the debris sorted through. Without having a working bee involving the entire coven, though, it would take weeks to restore it.

  “There are things growing underneath here!” Vicky said, hoisting up a large branch with superhuman strength. She had seen tiny leaves and stems that had not been crushed and was digging through hopefully.

  “Oh, this is not yarrow!” She plonked down onto the ground and pouted forlornly.

  But then I saw something red and shiny underneath all that mess.

  Something strawberry-shaped.

  11

  Tanner Spears dropped the broom he had been holding and looked at me in shock as I stomped my way up his front path.

  “I’ve been getting that reaction a lot today.”

  I stopped and shot him a grim smile.

  Tanner held his composure this time. “What are you doing here, Ruby?” he asked me. “We have enough to deal with today with the storm cleanup. We don’t need to be fending off any more wild accusations.” He picked up his broom again and started sweeping furiously.

  “I need to ask you some questions about Lisa’s strawberries,” I said, and he threw the broom to the ground again. So hard that the handle almost cracked.

  Wow.

  “Then you can talk to Lisa herself,” he said, about to storm off. “I don’t see what this has to do with me.”

  “I am here to talk to you as the judge of the Swift Valley Garden Show, not as the husband of Lisa Spears,” I stated, stepping in his way a little bit so that he couldn’t storm off through his front door. “Or are you unable to keep those two roles separate?”

  Tanner blinked a few times but didn’t have anything to say. I had him there.

  “Lisa has been cheating,” I said. “And I am not the only one who knows about it.”

  His face went white.

  It was going to be hard to explain that she had been cheating by planting her strawberries in a witch’s garden, which in my eyes was the real crime, so we had to invoke another rule that she had broken.

  One that said all produce had to be grown in the contestant’s own garden. Which Lisa had clearly failed to do, witch garden or not.

  “The strawberries that Lisa entered into the garden show were not grown here. They were grown at a property one kilometer away.”

  Tanner took one step backward. “And do you have proof of this?”

  Boy, we sure did.

  “She must have done it. Killed Jolene, I mean.” Vicky was sprawling out on her bed. She had her shoes kicked off and she was reading the back of a record sleeve while she spoke to me.

  I agreed, and I sat down on the edge of the bed and nodded. But I had still not found any definitive proof that linked Lisa Spears directly to the death of Jolene McGill.

  “Maybe if Jolene had known what Lisa was doing. But . . .” I stopped when Vicky just nodded and mmm-ed back at me without actually looking up.

  I grabbed the record cover from Vicky’s hands so that I could have her full attention.

  “Vicky, was there any way for anyone—any human, I mean—to know where that garden was?”<
br />
  Vicky rolled onto her side and propped her head up with the palm of her hand. “As far as I am aware, no one knew about it.” She cast me a look. “Not even all the witches know about it. That’s why I was so surprised when Geri showed you.”

  I sighed. So frustrating. I felt like we were this close to proving that Lisa killed Jolene, but without any proof that Jolene was in on the scheme or knew about it, somehow, I couldn’t do anything except have Lisa’s crown taken away.

  Vicky opened up the drawer beside her bed and pulled out a jar that held the last wilted bit of yarrow she still had. “Geri is asking for me to share,” she said with a wry look as she jingled the jar. “Does this look like enough to go around?”

  “Well, I can go without,” I said to her. I preferred to cast spells that didn’t need a brew, anyway. That seemed to be where my strength lay. All witches had different strengths. Some were good at brewing, some at conjuring, some at teleporting. I was good at using my mind.

  “Ooh, the power is back on!”

  Vicky jumped up and ran out into the hall to double-check. We’d heard the beeping of the microwave as it had turned itself back on. Vicky and I tested the light switches in the hall and kitchen. “Woo-hoo!”

  Shu was celebrating. “I can finally use my hair straightener again!” she called out drolly. “I have a date tonight, and I was thinking of cancelling it rather than meeting the guy with my hair all frizzy.”

  Vicky looked a little worried as she reached up and touched her own hair, which was straight as a pin. So naturally, she said, “Actually, Shu, can I borrow your hair straightener tomorrow night?” she called out. Then she looked at me a little sheepishly. “I have a date as well.”

  My mouth dropped open a little.