Magic Remembered

by Coralie Moss

  My youngest still had hold of my wrist. “Mom?”

  “Do you believe in magic?” I asked.

  Two sets of eyes stared at me, three if I counted the bat.

  “That creature is not like other bats,” I started with the obvious. “And I’m not like other moms.” I touched both sons simultaneously, focused on my love for them, and channelled a bright pink ribbon of light from my heart through my arms to my hands and outwards.

  “Mom? What are you doing?” Harper twisted his arm to disconnect from me.

  Thatcher looked down, eyes wide.

  “I’m kind of a witch,” I admitted, “and what I just did with my hands was transmit love.”

  My youngest snorted and tugged his hand away.

  Harper increased his glare. “Kind of a witch? How can you be kind of a witch? And what does that make me and Thatch?”

  “Sons of a witch?” My attempt at humor fell flat; this was not going well.

  The bat shifted slightly. Harper looked down the front of his body and stroked the bony claws threatening to make lace out of his tee shirt. “Shh,” he soothed. “Shhhh…”

  Thatcher took hold of my hand again, twisting it one way then the other, as if he wanted to unscrew it from my wrist and have a closer look inside. “Mom. You mean to tell us now that you could have…” He shrugged. “I don’t know, done our homework for us? Cleared up my pimples?”

  I had no strategy for this moment. I went with the truth. “My mother was a witch, the aunt who raised me was a witch, and you two might carry the potential for magic. You might not. Your father’s side of the family does—or did—but he made it clear he thought our lives would be less complicated if we kept quiet about our abilities. We did such a good job of keeping quiet, I almost forgot I had any.” I pointed to my oldest and the creature girdling his torso. “But I think it’s safe to say you’ve inherited some magical skills. Or ‘affinities,’ like Tanner said.”

  Harper shifted his gaze to his brother and bored two new holes in his head.

  “What?” Thatch threw his arms out to the sides.

  “You know what. Show Mom.”

  “She’ll never let me keep her.”

  Harper hugged the wings folded over his ribs. “I’m keeping this one.”

  I squirmed. My head zinged back and forth between my sons as I tried to translate their shorthand. “One of you want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Wait here, Mom.” Thatcher took the stairs two at a time and reappeared with a raccoon perched on his shoulder. One of its paws clutched a clump of my son’s hair; the other held a chunk of pie crust. The animal’s bushy tail, ringed with stripes of black and gray-ish brown, fluffed when it spied Harper and the bat. The raccoon dropped the crust, steadied itself with both paws scrabbling for purchase, and delivered a severe and pointed lecture. The creature continued its tirade of chitters and hisses, calming only when Thatcher picked up the piece of crust and handed it back.

  “Shall we sit?” I asked.

  Thatch extricated nimble-fingered paws from his hair, opened the front door, and led the raccoon outside.

  Harper tried to sit, but the bat wouldn’t ease its grip. “I’ll stand.”

  I swallowed, took a brief moment to stabilize by reaching into the ground below our house. “Guys, I met Tanner today on an inspection at an orchard. He figured out I was a witch, let me know he was a druid, and our day progressed from there.”

  “A druid. Go on.”

  Boys.

  And men. Tanner appeared outside the screen door, the raccoon attached to his pant leg.

  I waved him in and continued. “After dinner, we went to the back deck to talk. The ravens gave their alert, and you two saw what happened next.”

  On his way to the couch, Tanner appraised my offspring. “I run a mentoring program for magic-blessed youth. Would either or both of you like to check out what we do?”

  Thatch’s face lit up. He straightened his spine and scooted to the edge of the seat, turning his body to face Tanner. “You mean like learning how to communicate with animals and cast spells?”

  “That’s a part of it. Mostly, we teach you how to identify and work with your particular magic, how to keep it healthy, help it grow.”

  “How to keep us from joining the dark side,” Harper joked.

  Tanner considered Harper’s comment and shifted his body to include both boys in his comments. “There’s a dark side to everyone’s magic. We encourage you to acknowledge all aspects of your gifts and understand what it means when we say actions have consequences.”

  Both sons nodded, enthralled with Tanner’s offer, Thatcher perhaps more than Harp. I was irritated. I was the parent in the room, and whether my boys entered a magic-mentoring program was at least partially within my purview to yea or nay.

  Or perhaps I shouldn’t impose my feelings about my own lack of nurturance onto my sons. I could teach them and would do so gladly, but they had to want it. And maybe a mother wasn’t the best, or shouldn’t be the only, teacher for boys approaching adulthood.

  “Does a parent get any say on this?” I asked.

  “Would you rather your sons not understand their gifts?”

  I pressed my lips together and glowered at Tanner. “I barely understand my own.”

  “Which is why I’m making this offer.”

  I tried to muster a fresh batch of righteous indignation, and I couldn’t. “If you two are interested, you have my conditional blessing.”

  They both turned their attention to Tanner.

  “When do we start?” asked Thatcher.

  Chapter 5

  Harper and Thatch accepted a last-minute invitation from a group of friends to camp on the southern part of the island. Once the bat was settled in the shed below the deck, they left with promises to exercise caution, show up for their day jobs, and return home by dinner the following night. I stood in the driveway, staring into the darkness long after their Jeep’s tail lights disappeared.

  Tanner suddenly standing at my back didn’t startle me. I was getting used to the druid’s stealth-mode way of moving from one spot to another. I asked, “Wasn’t I wondering hours ago if this day could get any weirder?”

  “Yes, I believe you were,” he answered.

  “It got weirder.” I turned toward the house. “I hope that giant bat thing was the last of it.”

  “I think I should spend the night,” Tanner announced, resting his hands at his hips and relaxing his posture. A relaxed Tanner Marechal, Provincial agent and druid, thrummed with a kind of take-charge sensuality I found completely disconcerting. “Whoever—or whatever—sent those photos is either trying to point the finger at wrongdoing or manipulate an outcome. And frankly, I’m leaning toward the latter.”

  “I agree. I have a very hard time believing Cliff and Abi are deliberately undermining the health of their trees.” I snugged my shawl closer around my upper arms and mounted the stairs. My relationships with most of the farming community on the island were solid, and if any one of them was in trouble, the others were far more likely to rally around than take advantage, let alone commit murder. “What else can you share?”

  Tanner followed and held the screen door open for me to pass first. “The other orchardists were close in age to the Pearmains, and both had family members waiting to take over day-to-day operations once they retired.”

  Interesting. “Back in May, Cliff and Abi threw a party to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary. They mentioned two of their grandsons were planning to move to the island come September.”

  I yawned. The long, strange day was catching up with me. If Tanner was spending the night, I had sheets to change and should probably put a load of towels into the washing machine.

  “I want you to be safe,” Tanner said.

  The statement startled me. “I’ve never felt unsafe here or anywhere else on the island. I don’t feel unsafe now.”

  He emphasized his skepticism by crossing his arms over his
chest and flexing his forearms. “Let me at least place wards around your house. You’re an untrained witch and—”

  “Rub it in, Tanner.” I glared at him in the dark and shared my most pressing concern. “Do you think my sons are safe?”

  “No one’s ever one-hundred percent immune to the unpredictable; you know that, Calliope, but in general I’d say yes, they should be fine.”

  “In general?” I asked. His nod triggered my maternal worry reflex. “Should I have made them stay home tonight?”

  “Magic will seek them out once their power has been awakened. They’re still dormant.”

  “Dormant? Did you see how that bat climbed Harper and would not let go?”

  “All right, mostly dormant.”

  “But that creature—”

  “That creature saw kinship, recognized Harper’s compassion and his lack of fear.”

  I shook out my arms and rolled my shoulders. Truth be told, I would rest better knowing the house was protected, even temporarily. “You can have one of the boys’ rooms upstairs. And you might want to check the closet and look under the bed before you go to sleep.”

  * * *

  Unable to settle, I dumped the wicker basket of clean laundry onto my bed. I had started the day stressed about the possibility of raising another child. I was ending it stressed about raising the power of my magic enough to protect the two children I had. There was nothing like pairing up socks and folding underwear to settle me in reality.

  Yet, how could there be a deadline to improving this ability I was born with?

  I stared at my hands, nails trimmed and unpolished, fingers free of rings. They performed so many mundane tasks without a hitch. They were also gifted with sensors that, as I learned during my visit with Rowan, came with expiration dates. I snorted. Yet another cruel joke played on my womanhood by my advancing age.

  I couldn’t remember my aunt ever mentioning the necessity of regular rituals. When her dementia became unmanageable and my cousins moved her to an eldercare complex, they’d offered her house—this house—to me. And because I’d grown up under the steep roof lines of this A-framed structure, coming back to its embrace after divorcing Doug was more than a homecoming. Every tangible belonging of my mother’s had been stored, waiting for me, in the attic.

  I slid my underwear into the drawer, refolded a jumble of bras, and cast a scathing look at the calendar I used to track my dating life. Outside my bedroom, Tanner’s footfalls reverberated through the floor and the solid wood door, adding to the stack of reasons why I couldn’t settle my mind. If the man was aiming for stealth while he went about warding, he wasn’t succeeding.

  I pulled on a pair of drawstring pants and opened the door to the hall. “Tanner!”

  No answer. I ducked into my closet, pulled my arms out of my long-sleeved T-shirt, and wrangled myself into a shelf bra.

  “What?” His sudden appearance in the outer doorway startled me.

  I brought one hand to my throat, knocking my elbow against the corner of the bureau. “Ow! You’re making a lot of noise.”

  He backed away and gave me space to enter the hall.

  “And I can’t sleep,” I added.

  “I’m sorry if I kept you awake. I was just about to set wards around the perimeter.”

  “Can I come with you?”

  “They’re just simple words, nothing terribly interesting or complicated.”

  “But I’ve never watched someone set up protections around a house.” I held his gaze—or maybe he held mine—and my house held its breath. And when was the last time I watched anyone practice magic? I mentally rifled through my years under this roof, one with my mother, so many more without. The few displays of magic I could recall were tied to mundane things, like giving dropped plates a soft landing or knowing who was on the phone in the days before answering machines had caller ID.

  Even as a little girl, I knew magic existed around me and in me. I knew not everyone was gifted with magical abilities, I knew to keep quiet about mine, and I knew it was safe to play openly within the confines of the property.

  Tanner pulled out one of the oak kitchen chairs and sat. The topmost buttons of his shirt were undone, and a cord of intricately knotted threads looped his neck. Whatever hung from the cord was hidden underneath his shirt. He’d rolled up the bottoms of his pant legs, and left his flip flops by the front door.

  I went from stirring the mists of memory to a minor revelation—Tanner Marechal had gorgeous feet. One heel rested on a chair rung, the other leg stretched forward. That I might have a foot fetish was news to me, but I wasn’t complaining. Nope. No complaints at all.

  “Calli.”

  My gaze flew to his, and my cheeks warmed.

  “I have an idea,” he said, “a way for you to participate in the actual warding. I’ll do a simple three-part, basic protection: Warn. Protect. Defend. Prévenir. Protéger. Défendre.”

  “Is that French?”

  He nodded. “French was my first language. We’ll lay the perimeter ward first then come inside and apply wards to the windows and doors.”

  “How can I help?”

  Tanner slouched deeper into the chair and brought one heel to rest on the edge of the seat. He rubbed his bent knee, his gaze on the fingers playing a random rhythm against the bare wood of the dining table. “We’re going to brew a concoction using plants from your land. And some of your blood.”

  “My blood? Isn’t blood used for…for bad magic?”

  “The addition of blood creates stronger wards, and using your blood will tie the protective spells to you and your kin. There are wards in place already. They’re weak, but they’re blood-bound too.”

  That was news to me. “Can you tell whose blood was used to create the wards?”

  “I might be able to with time but not tonight.” He stared at me a moment and continued, “Do you get many visitors?”

  “I don’t,” I said, shaking my head. “But the boys do. Lots of their friends come in and out, sleep over, that kind of thing.”

  “I’ll set the wards to admit anyone directly connected to the three of you.”

  “Can you keep out my ex?” I was joking. Kind of.

  “Seriously?”

  “No, I’m just a bit upset with him right now.” I busied myself with rolling the waistband of my at-home pants, which were a little long for traipsing through the woods.

  “Has he been bothering you?” The golden glow I’d first seen earlier in the day flickered around Tanner’s eyes and lashes. The faintest crackle split the air around his agitated fingertips.

  “Physically, not at all. It’s…” No, I wasn’t going to spill the details of my failed relationship to this man, not yet. Not until he put shoes on and stopped glowing. “It’s not important.” I started for the front door. “Is there a particular plant I should gather?”

  “Anything with thorns.”

  Basket handle over one arm, clippers in the other hand, I gathered leaves and a couple of hard, unripe fruit from the crabapple tree in the center of my backyard. I wasn’t sure if Tanner wanted me to collect the actual thorns; I snapped a few off the tree just in case. The patches of wild blackberries and cultivated raspberries yielded stems, leaves, and juicy fruit. Closer to the woods, low-growing salal whispered its presence and offered up sharp-tipped leaves and ripening purple berries.

  I stopped in the middle of cutting a sprig. Bears loved salal, though the island didn’t have much of an ursine population. An inner urge said to add the plant, but actively seeking and trusting my intuition was an atrophied muscle so I paused. Fur brushed the side of my thigh, and a wave of protective energy surrounded me from the ground up and over my head.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, dropping three clusters of waxy leaves and dark purple berries into my basket.

  Was Tanner expecting me to drink the tea? An image of the two of us walking the ambit of my property, peeing at strategic points, offered a giggly respite to the stress still playing thro
ugh my body. I wasn’t sure what else to add to my collection of thorny things, so I sat on the ground and asked my land what more it had to offer, not expecting an answer but eager to see if I was on a roll.

  Mullein.

  The opposite of thorny and a purported apotropaic, mullein harbored the ability to ward off evil spirits. More esoterically, its flowering stalk was used by men to designate their romantic intentions. A cluster grew outside my garden’s fence, year after year.

  I cut one tall stem bursting with small yellow flowers, collected a few oversized, velvety leaves, and headed to the house.

  Tanner had a pot of water simmering on the stove.

  “Lots of thorny things and some mullein,” I said, tilting my haul for his perusal.

  “Mullein?” He tried unsuccessfully to hide his grin before instructing me to chop everything I’d collected and add it to the water. “I’ll need a paintbrush. Preferably one you haven’t used.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Your blood.”

  I shivered. I’d already had blood drawn today, stored in vials on their way to a Vancouver lab which, I assumed, handled the testing of biological material taken from Magicals, not humans. “How do you plan to get it?”

  “I’ll prick your fingertip. This tea doesn’t require much.”

  Tanner positioned another cutting board next to the one I was using and set about chopping and mashing handfuls of plant matter before dumping them into the cook pot. Once we were done and had scrubbed most of the stains off our hands, he took his laptop to the living room while I tackled the laundry.

  Towels washing, and dryer emptied, I sat at the dining table and watched as Tanner poured the liquid off the macerated plant matter through a stainless-steel mesh strainer and into a wide-mouth canning jar. When he stood himself next to me, knife in hand, and set the jar near my elbow, I assumed getting my blood was next and extended my left arm.

  “I don’t think I can watch this part,” I admitted, “but take what you need.”

  Tanner’s fingers were strong and gentle. He used the knife to puncture the tip of my ring finger and squeezed, released, and repeated, occasionally massaging my palm. I lost track of time, pictured bright red liquid flowing from the golden tip of a calligrapher’s pen, and was relieved when Tanner declared he had enough.