A Familiar Sense of Dead

by E L Wilder

  “These damn spiders. Every summer they get worse, I swear,” her mother said, still spritzing the corner.

  “Bleck,” said Hazel, sticking out her tongue.

  “You’re just in time. The picnic basket is in the fridge,” her mother said, finally turning around. She looked Hazel up and down. “You’re going to have a hell of a time swimming in jeans, but don’t let me stop you from trying.”

  Damn it. The picnic on the beach. Hazel had completely forgotten.

  “I can’t,” she said slowly. There was no way she could keep her family dinner date, but there was also no way she could tell her mother the reason why. “Tyler needs my help wrangling another interloper. A unicorn.”

  Her mother gave her a knowing look, and for a moment Hazel felt bare, like she always did under her mother’s piercing gaze. It wasn’t that her mother was judgmental—though like any good mother, she certainly could be—but it was that Hazel, much to her frustration, had never been able to hide anything from her, despite her best efforts. An actress Hazel may have been, but there was only one role she could ever play with her mother, and that was the part of daughter.

  “Check yourself for ticks afterward,” her mother said, in her perennial reminder on outdoor safety and in her unofficial role as spokeswoman for the CDC. Then she added, “You’ve been spending a lot of time with him.”

  “There’s a lot to clean up after Ronnie,” she said too defensively.

  Her mother just smiled and nodded. “You promised the kids . . .”

  As if on cue, Link entered the kitchen on a wave of noise, brushing his mop of dirty blond hair out of his eyes. Harper followed, concealed beneath a baggy T-shirt and a floppy beach hat and lugging a tote of books.

  “G-ma! You cooking up the nugs?”

  “The what?” said Hazel, trying to stifle a laugh.

  “He means nuggets,” said Harper, trailing him into the kitchen and rolling her eyes and pulling her black curls into a ponytail.

  “Then he should say nuggets,” said Hazel. “Otherwise I’m going to vom.”

  Link turned his attention to Hazel now. “You need to follow me on Instagram,” he said. “It would give me some serious cred.”

  “Cred?” asked Hazel. Why was everyone pushing her back toward the social media cliff? “What is this all about, Link?”

  “He’s trying to be an influencer,” said Harper, rolling her eyes.

  “Ooooh,” said Hazel. “No can do, little man.”

  “You’re an influencer, Auntie Hazel,” he said. “I’m going to be like you.”

  “Like me . . .”

  “Famous, powerful. Using your influence to get what you want when you want it.”

  “I’m not like that,” she said. She looked at her mother, but her mother had suddenly discovered an issue with her spray bottle that required immediate attention. Hazel turned her attention back to Link. “I’m not!”

  “But you’re famous,” he said. “And I’m going to be famous too. I’ve been streaming Fortnite on Twitch and I already have forty subs. I’m earning bits left and right.”

  “I have no idea what any of that means, but it sounds illegal,” said Amy. “Now grab the picnic basket and let’s get going.”

  “Do we really have to eat our food outside?” moaned Link. “That’s where the animals go to the bathroom!”

  “Then just be glad I’m only making you eat out there,” said her mother. “You could use a break from Fortnite and all its streaming bits.”

  “That doesn’t sound right at all, mom,” said Hazel, pilfering a sandwich from the picnic basket and edging toward the door. “Sorry to run, but I really need to head out—Tyler is expecting me.”

  “Wait, you’re not coming?” Harper asked pointedly, pinning Hazel with a look of pure teenage panic.

  “Something has come up,” Hazel said, her voice thick with apology.

  Harper looked unimpressed, but Hazel tried ignoring it for the time being. She kissed the three of them, tried unsuccessfully to fix Link’s unruly hair, and started to back out of the kitchen. “I’ll make it up to you later. Promise!” She crossed her heart.

  “You’re really not coming?” griped Link.

  “Not because I don’t want to. I really have to go, though, Clancy is waiting—I mean Tyler.”

  “Clancy?” her mother intoned. “The cat?”

  “He’s not a cat,” said Hazel.

  “And what does the not-a-cat want?”

  “Another practice session,” lied Hazel. She knew her mother wouldn’t approve of her going over the Postern yet. The Bennett family had a strict but simple code of conduct as far as the Postern was concerned: Stay away. The exception was, of course, when a Bennett woman had come into her Knack. The dangers were just too great otherwise. It would be like sending a first-time driver out onto the LA Freeway during rush-hour traffic. And while Hazel’s Knack was in full effect, she was seriously behind on her studies and, by Bennett standards, she might as well have been quaint so far as the Postern was concerned.

  “You said you were coming!” complained Harper. Hazel knew this was about more than a picnic dinner and an evening dip in the harbor. Harper was hardly the avid swimmer, but Hazel’s mother would take Link in the water, and that would have left Hazel and Harper alone to talk. Hazel knew it was the loss of that girl time that Harper was struggling over.

  “And I wish I could. Why don’t you walk with me?” offered Hazel.

  Harper jumped at the opportunity. “Yes!”

  “No secrets!” Link complained as Hazel and Harper ducked out the kitchen door.

  “Niece/aunt privilege!” Hazel called back.

  “No such thing! Nephew override!”

  “Sorry!”

  Hazel and Harper stepped out of the manor and onto the wide southern lawn that led down to the harbor and the South Way. Hazel knew what the topic of discussion would be before Harper even started in. Her niece had already laid it out for Hazel, both because she was the Awesome Aunt and because she herself had struggled to find an identity outside of the farm at Harper’s age. Harper wanted out of the homeschooling game.

  Like all Bennetts before her, Harper had been homeschooled, a standard going back generations. There were things that a Bennett child needed to learn from an early age that no public school could teach them, and there were things that the world didn’t need to learn from a motormouthed young Bennett child. So the Bennett family educated their own. As a professional-homebody in training, Link loved the arrangement, but Harper chafed at it. She craved to see the world she read about in books. Hazel could empathize. She and Juniper had struggled with a similar dynamic. Juniper had been a fierce tomboy and had never yearned to see much beyond the boundaries of the Bennett estate. But Hazel and her fierce wanderlust had sent her down a path that eventually saw her running away entirely. She had been the first Bennett to break with tradition, enrolling at Larkhaven High School starting her junior year. Harper was looking to one-up her by enrolling as a freshman. But only if she could work up the nerve to ask her mother and grandmother.

  Hazel understood her niece’s reticence. Hazels’ mother, as the headmistresses and sole instructor, would be the hardest sell. Even though Amy was a lifelong and barely reformed hippy, she was oddly stern and authoritarian—a seemingly clashing blend of The Man and The Anarchist. Public school was somehow both the honored institution that lifted young minds out of the dark ages and also the grimy prison that contained the unwashed and quaint masses of the world.

  If her niece wanted that for herself, Hazel would support it. But Harper would have to do the legwork.

  “Is today the day?” she asked her niece.

  “I don’t know,” her niece responded nervously. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “You’re running out of time to delay,” she said. “Mom is no doubt already planning her curriculum for the fall. The longer you wait, the harder she’s going to take it.”

  “I know, I know. I will. I’m just w
aiting for the right moment.”

  “Can I offer you some advice?” asked Hazel.

  “Of course. Please.”

  “There is no perfect time, but the sooner the better. The longer you keep this inside, the longer you let somebody else’s dreams become your own, the more it’s going to tear you in two.”

  Harper didn’t say anything, she just nodded solemnly. “I still wish you were coming to the picnic.

  “I know. Somehow I will make this up to you,” she said, kissing Harper on the forehead. “But not until later.”

  She set out down the South Way at a near-jog. Now was as good a time as any to get back into her exercise routine.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  When Hazel finally trudged through the last of the Tanglewood, Clancy was waiting for her atop a scrap of stone wall. He offered up no quips or witticisms about her late arrival and threw no barbs about her readiness. Here, at the top of this hill, deep in the old-growth forest, stood the Postern, an ancient stone archway that had somehow remained standing for centuries. As she approached, she could see the air inside it bending, shimmering in iridescent pinks and purples like the surface of a soap bubble.

  “I’m ready,” she said. “Any words of advice?”

  Stay close to me, do what I do, and no matter what, don’t tick anyone off.

  “I’ll try to contain myself,” she said. Her delivery was cool, but everything inside her was aflutter. She couldn’t tell if she was going to have a heart attack or be sick on the spot, but both felt probable at that moment.

  Clancy nodded and then hopped off the stone wall. He looked back at her once before stepping through the Postern. For a moment, it looked like he was pushing against an invisible barrier. The air around his body shimmered and stretched. Then, all at once, there was a pop, like somebody had snapped a piece of bubblegum, and Clancy disappeared.

  “Showtime, Hazel,” she muttered to herself. She thought about sticking a hand or a foot through, like she was testing the harbor waters, but she knew the best way to swim was to just jump in. She counted down from three and when she reached zero, she rushed forward and practically threw herself through the Postern.

  The air seemed to catch her for a moment. She dug her heels and took slow, staggered steps forward. All at once the resistance gave way, and what felt like cobwebs brushed her face. She tumbled forward and landed hard on the ground.

  You almost crushed me. Clancy stared down at her. Get up. It’s best not to linger.

  She sat up. They were still in the forest. She felt a pang of disappointment, and she wondered if she had done it wrong. What if the Postern rejected people who weren’t properly attuned or some magical jargon like that?

  “Did it work?” she asked. “Are we in Quark?”

  He snorted. This is the Dimwood.

  “The whatnow?”

  The Dimwood. Think of it as the magical reflection of the Tanglewood.

  She took stock of her surroundings. To say it was a reflection of the Tanglewood would be like saying a farmhouse cellar was a reflection of a castle dungeon. The Tanglewood was wild, but the Dimwood was another degree entirely. Wilder. Wildest. The trees that surrounded them were gnarled and twisted behemoths that obliterated the sun and the undergrowth formed an imposing wall that she swore shifted and writhed in front of her very eyes.

  For a moment she panicked. She had never thought about the return trip and the sudden notion that she might get trapped in the Dimwood sent her into a panic. She spun, praying the Postern was a two-way street.

  She exhaled in relief. A silly fear. Of course it was a two-way portal. Interlopers used it all the time to sneak into the mundane world.

  The Postern was there. And then some. She recognized the familiar archway, but it no longer clung to a mere wisp of a ruined stone wall. Rather it sat as the vanguard to a labyrinth of crumbling walls and a tower that thrust skyward.

  The sky!

  She was certain she had never seen a shade of blue quite like that. It was as if somebody had plugged the sky into an outlet and turned it into a slab of electrified cobalt.

  It’s best not to linger, said Clancy. Besides, we have to get to the shop before the Council does.

  “The shop?”

  Come on. The road isn’t far from here.

  Without waiting, he turned and slipped into the thick underbrush. She followed, wishing she was the size of a cat as she struggled through the impossible tangle.

  “What is it?” she asked when at last she’d caught up to him. “The Postern.”

  We don’t have time for history lessons right now.

  She had looked up the word postern before, and it turned out a postern was a side door or gate in a castle wall. That hardly squared with the Postern situated in the Tanglewood, back on the mundane side of things, but on this end, it made perfect sense. She glanced back over her shoulder and glimpsed the ruins one last time before they were swallowed entirely by the forest.

  “It’ll help pass the time,” she said. “What is it?”

  A wizard’s tower. Or it used to be anyway. Used to belong to Merlin.

  “Merlin? Like King Arthur’s Merlin?”

  He would probably be ticked off to hear you frame it that way. Maybe Merlin’s King Arthur would be more accurate. But, anyway, yes, that Merlin. It was one of his vacation homes.

  “Wasn’t he English?”

  Welsh, actually. He was just doing a stint in England when he got famous. The best witches and wizards never stay in one place for long, and as the best of the best, Merlin was a man on the move. He bounced back and forth between the mundane and the magical realm.

  “And he built a home in Vermont?”

  This was his summer retreat. Until people followed him here and set up a town nearby. Totally ruined his privacy. That’s why he eventually left. That and he died.

  “Merlin in Vermont doesn’t exactly jive with my understanding of world history.”

  That’s because it’s a mundane history. Your Vermont is merely a blip in time and space. You need to think bigger picture and less linearly.

  “You seem to know a lot about Merlin.”

  What can I say? I’m a veritable historian.

  They trudged on in silence. Hazel kept a keen eye on the forest that pushed in on all sides. Hazel swore she caught glimpses of things moving just beyond the next bush or darting between the nearest trees. She tried to hold her breath and listen but she heard nothing besides the chattering of tree branches and the shushing of leaves.

  They pressed on, and after some time, she saw a reddish glow appearing through the trees.

  “Clancy, what’s that?”

  No asky the questions.

  “Do you see that light?”

  Yes, and I’m trying my hardest to both ignore it and not draw its attention.

  “Why not?”

  Don’t know, don’t want to know. If you want to make it back to the farm to tell the tale of your field trip to Quark, then step quick, don’t detour, and don’t ask questions.

  She had been told her whole life that she was unprepared for crossing the Postern and now she was beginning to see why. She didn’t want to admit it, but she was suddenly grateful for the boundaries set by Bennett-family tradition. And for Clancy’s presence.

  Hazel took one last look at the red glow seeping through the boughs and shivered.

  At last, they stepped through the bushes and onto a road, a cobblestone lane cutting through the Dimwood.

  “A yellow brick road,” said Hazel, delighted.

  More like yellowed-brick road.

  The stones were old and worn and the road’s edges were lost to the undergrowth spilling from the Dimwood. “It’s cute,” she said.

  Hmph. This way. Clancy turned right and padded down the road.

  Hazel craned her neck in the other direction. “And what’s that way?”

  Silverwell Academy. Now don’t wander from the road. We were lucky crossing through the Dimwood. Let’s not pu
sh it.

  She hurried to catch up, shouting, “Slow down! I thought you had asthma!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  By the time they arrived on the outskirts of Quark, Hazel found herself yet again out of breath. On the plus side, a few more days like this and she would be back in Hollywood shape.

  “I don’t suppose Quark has Segway rentals,” she said.

  Not unless you consider a chariot a Segway.

  “Chariots?” she asked. “Really?”

  No, not really.

  She was about to retort when they rounded a bend in the road where the Dimwood suddenly fell away. They stood at the top of a small hill overlooking a village, a cozy cluster of roofs and steeples that reminded her of Larkhaven. Yet there was so much about Quark that was dramatically different from her hometown.

  A tower rose from the village. At first glance, she thought it was a church spire, but as she and Clancy descended the hill and drew nearer the town, she saw that it was a clocktower. Though Quark was a much bigger town than Larkhaven, there was something about the place that reminded her of her hometown. She kept her questions to herself for now.

  Beyond the village stretched a range of mountains that rose at impossible angles, their pitches and peaks so dramatic they looked like teeth of some wicked sawblade. Even now, in the summer, snow-capped their peaks.

  “Wow,” she gasped.

  Clancy took no notice of the dramatic panorama and she had to rush to catch up with him yet again.

  The town felt less New England and more old England as they moved through it—uneven cobblestone streets weaving through a tight cluster of daub and waddle buildings and houses. Every alley and breezeway seemed to hold an inviting set of stairs to somewhere out of sight, seeming to promise mystery and wonder. Yet between the period houses were sandwiched the occasional raised ranch with vinyl siding or an old brick colonial.

  “Clancy,” she said. “Quark is beautiful! And strange! And mysterious! Why don’t you spend all your time here?”

  The rent is too high and your barns are free.

  “Don’t you have a family?” She knew that the Bennett witches and Clancy’s family went back generations, but she had never thought of Clancy of having a family. She’d only ever seen him alone, a drifter. She realized suddenly how little she actually knew about Clancy.