Wisteria Wrinkle

by Angela Pepper

  An idea struck her, and she chuckled under her breath. If she could take a photo here, she’d have it printed as a postcard, which she would mail to Detective Ethan Fung. Having a wonderful adventure in a Hell dimension. Wish you were here. Best, Zinnia.

  The youngest of their not-so-merry band of adventurers, Liza and Xavier, who’d been trailing behind, caught up to Zinnia as she sat on the rock rubbing salve on her heel blisters.

  Liza told Xavier, “Go on ahead without me. I want to talk to Zinnia.”

  Xavier rubbed the tip of his broad nose. He seemed reluctant to leave Liza. His light-green eyes darted along the horizon as he stayed at her side. Xavier seemed different here, out in the desert. His usual cockiness had turned into vigilance. He’d been walking with a sharpened stick. With the way he held the stick, his muscles tense as he surveyed their surroundings, he looked every bit a man. A warrior.

  “Don’t sit still for too long,” Xavier said gruffly. “And yell for me at the first sign of trouble.”

  “I will,” Liza said tiredly.

  Xavier grinned at Zinnia. “I can’t believe you’re a witch,” he said. “That’s so surreal.”

  Zinnia nodded. When the group had used the washrooms, Liza and Xavier had been debriefed about their coworkers. As much as the witches, gnome, cartomancer, and sprite valued their secrecy, they agreed that interdimensional travel was enough of a trust bond between all parties present. Liza and Xavier did not, as far as anyone knew, have any supernatural powers. But then again, even if they did, it was probable their powers wouldn’t work in this other world.

  Liza did not know her grandmother was in charge of this world, including the creatures who’d imprisoned her. Only Karl and Zinnia knew so far, though if Zinnia had it in her head, that meant Margaret already knew or would soon.

  Once Xavier had walked out of hearing range, Zinnia asked Liza, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing new,” Liza said, sitting cross-legged on the red sand in front of Zinnia. “I just got tired of hearing Xavier talking. Did you know we were trapped in that timewyrm holding cell for five days?”

  “I suspected as much.”

  “You abandoned us here for five days!”

  “We didn’t know it would be so long. The time dilation between the worlds isn’t consistent. When Margaret and I came through the first time, we experienced less time passing than the hours we were gone, not more.”

  “But you went to the nineteen-fifties, not to this Hell world.”

  “The key didn’t come with a chart of time differences. We couldn’t have known. We came for you as soon as we could.”

  “Margaret said you went back to the office and worked until five o’clock.”

  “We did,” Zinnia said with a sigh, regretting the wasted time. “And then we went to my house to get supplies. We couldn’t have come for you without the potion that made the duplicate key work, but in hindsight, I should have made an excuse to leave the office early. I’m sorry we left you as long as we did.”

  Liza sniffed. “Those hours turned into days that felt like an eternity.”

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” Zinnia said. “It shouldn’t have happened. I want you to know that it wasn’t your fault.”

  Liza frowned. “Why would I think it was my fault?”

  “Sometimes people blame themselves when bad things happen.”

  Liza looked down at Zinnia’s feet.

  Somewhere in the distance, a bird cawed.

  “Double your socks over,” Liza said, still looking at Zinnia’s feet. “Like this.” She shook the sand off Zinnia’s sock, put it on her blistered foot, and then pulled the top of the sock down as a second layer over Zinnia’s heel. “You’re getting those blisters because the shoe’s too loose for hiking. Now the two layers will slide past each other rather than across your foot. You’re stuck with the blisters you’ve already got, but this should prevent more.”

  Zinnia did the same treatment with her other sock, pulled her shoes back on, and stood to test them. “That works,” she said, taking a few cautious steps. “You’re a genius!”

  Liza’s eyes glistened with tears. “There’s no need to be sarcastic.” Her lips pouted.

  Zinnia put her hands on Liza’s shoulders and looked into her wide-set, honey-brown eyes. “I wasn’t being sarcastic. You’re a clever girl, and I’m glad to have you on our team.”

  Liza shrugged off Zinnia’s hands. “But none of us would even be here if it wasn’t for my genius move to stick my grandma’s key into that elevator panel. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “You might not have had a choice. Magic has a mind of its own.”

  “Are you saying someone made me use the key?”

  “Not someone. Magic itself. It’s a force, with a personality of its own. Another witch I know claims that magic has a perverse sense of humor.”

  “But why me? Why did Grandma Queenie have that key at her house?”

  Zinnia looked around. The light was disappearing rapidly, the desert landscape turning midnight blue. Zinnia wanted to tell Liza the truth about her grandmother. Now that they were on their way back home, it should be safe enough.

  “Liza, can you keep a secret?”

  “A secret?” Liza snorted. “You know I can’t. If it wasn’t for me blabbing, Margaret’s marriage wouldn’t be on the rocks right now.”

  Zinnia was confused. Why were they talking about Mike and Margaret’s marriage? What did that have to do with anything?

  Liza’s eyes widened. “You didn’t know?” She shook her head. “Mike’s been cheating on her, with a junior programmer at his office. The girl is friends with one of my friends, who told me about it, but only because she didn’t know I work with Margaret. I put two and two together, and figured out it was Mike. It was pretty obvious after that. Whenever Margaret’s kids’ school couldn’t get through to Mr. Mills at work, I’d find out the next day it was because he took a long ‘business meeting’ with his junior programmer.” Liza’s face scrunched up. “I didn’t like knowing he was treating her like that. Margaret’s not easy to get along with, but she’s a decent person. She didn’t deserve that. So I told her.”

  Zinnia could only blink. Why hadn’t Margaret told Zinnia that Mike was cheating on her? Why had she allowed Zinnia to believe Margaret was the one pushing him away?

  Zinnia asked, “When? When did you tell her?”

  “A month ago,” Liza said. “Ever since then she’s been in complete denial. She pretends I never told her. That’s why I didn’t want to hang out with everyone in the break room at lunch time. That’s why I was riding the elevator at lunch until I got bored and stuck that key in.”

  “That’s...” Zinnia was at a loss for words.

  “So, maybe everything bad that’s happening right now is my fault,” Liza said angrily, getting to her feet and kicking a stone off the path. “Everyone would have been better off if I’d never existed in the first place.”

  “Don’t say that,” Zinnia said. “You can’t...”

  Liza wasn’t listening. She was already jogging away, hurrying to catch up with Xavier and the others.

  Zinnia grabbed her purse and started running as well.

  As they trudged toward the mountain, Zinnia kept thinking about an old poem, the one where a single missing horseshoe nail caused a war to be lost.

  The group wouldn’t be there if Liza hadn’t stuck her grandmother’s key in the elevator control panel. And she wouldn’t have done so if Margaret had made Liza feel more welcome in the office. But it wasn’t Margaret’s fault. Not entirely. Margaret wouldn’t have turned on Liza if Mike hadn’t been cheating on her.

  The group was trudging across a desert in a possible Hell dimension because a married man couldn’t keep his hands to himself. Perhaps some of the blame belonged to the young woman he was carrying on with. Or was the woman the victim? Was he her boss who’d been taking advantage? Or was she a shameless hussy who didn’t care about destroying a fa
mily? It was hard not to hate them both for what they’d done to Margaret and the kids.

  Zinnia unclenched her fists and tried to think about something else. Anything else. Playing the mental blame game, shifting the fault between a man and a woman—it only made her feel sick to her stomach. She had been in Margaret’s shoes herself. It was not a good place to be. She needed something to take her mind off the vicious blame game circling in her head.

  Zinnia caught up with Xavier, who was ambling on his own, and fell in stride next to him. He was carrying one of the lanterns they’d been given by the castle staff. The sky was not yet entirely dark—perhaps it wouldn’t be, thanks to the two bright moons—but the lanterns gave a cozy feeling of light bubbles around the travelers.

  “Talk to me,” Zinnia said tiredly to Xavier. “What do you think of all this?”

  “I don’t care for the desert,” he said, spitting out grit and wiping his full lips with the back of his hand. “The tropical forest wasn’t my favorite, either. This place is like all of Mexico crammed into a few square miles.”

  “And you don’t like that?”

  “No. I guess that doesn’t make me much of a half-Mexican, does it?” He grinned and waggled his bushy eyebrows.

  Zinnia smiled. Xavier did have his charm, especially when he made fun of himself.

  “You are your own person,” she said. “What about the village and the castle? Did your Irish side enjoy that?”

  He didn’t answer. He stopped walking and looked at her. “What’s the deal, Zinnia? How do I find my magic?”

  Down to brass tacks already!

  “Not everyone has powers,” she said.

  He set the glowing lantern on the path and crossed his arms. “But you do. And Margaret, and Gavin, and Dawna. Even Karl. Why not me?”

  Zinnia was reminded of the many why-not-me conversations she’d had with her great-niece, whose powers hadn’t manifested yet—assuming she had any.

  “Tell me about your family,” Zinnia said. “These things run in families. If you do have supernatural lineage, there will be clues. Perhaps you can think of a family legend involving unusual skills?”

  He grinned. “Is that a crack about Irish people and their legendary drinking abilities?” He shook his head. “Zinnia, I expected better from you than lazy stereotypes.”

  “Be serious for a minute,” she said. “Is there something your grandparents joke about? Any unusual nicknames?”

  His rubbery features grew serious. “Now you’ve got me thinking,” he said.

  “Thinking isn’t such a bad thing.”

  He looked down, stroking the stubble on his chin. He really had been trapped with the timewyrms for five days, if not longer, based on the darkness of the beard he had growing in.

  He flicked his light-green eyes up at Zinnia. “Is it true you guys were calling us the Red Shirts?”

  “That’s not how we truly feel about you,” she said. “It was just...” She had no excuse. “It was said in poor taste, I’m afraid.”

  He waved a hand. “Nah. It’s actually the best part. I got to be part of something, part of a bigger story. Maybe next time I’ll be the hero, and not the damsel in distress.”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “With that beard of yours, you don’t make a very good damsel.”

  He laughed and pointed at her. “A joke! This whole wacky adventure has given you a sense of humor.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “It’s always been here, Xavier.”

  He picked up the lantern and skipped energetically to get moving toward the rest of the group. “Good talk,” he said.

  “Good talk,” she agreed.

  “One of my grandfathers has some great stories,” he said after a moment of walking. “I always thought he was making stuff up, but now you’ve got me wondering.”

  “Oh?”

  They sped up their pace to catch up with the group, and continued talking about Xavier’s family.

  As the group reached the mountain, Zinnia saw something moving at the side of the mountain. She blinked. Was it a trick of the moonlight, or was something traveling up there?

  Zinnia fell in step next to Margaret, pointing ahead. “Do you see something up there?”

  “I see the broken windows for the accordion floor,” Margaret said.

  Zinnia saw the movement again. The two big moons gave off a considerable amount of light in the night sky. “Look! There it goes again.”

  Margaret stopped walking and squinted. “That looks like one of those...” Her voice died in her throat. The thing made itself visible, wrapping its long, sinuous body around the front of the peak. It was a timewyrm, and it looked even bigger than Zinnia remembered.

  The others were taking notice of the creature as well. Everyone was talking, pointing, looking.

  Liza screamed at the top of her lungs.

  In the time Liza took to catch her breath, Xavier yelled, “Timewyrm! Take cover!”

  They were completely exposed, walking on a path in the middle of the desert. There was nothing to take cover under. Zinnia tested her powers with an illumination spell. Nothing happened. Her powers were still on the blink.

  Karl blustered, “Calm down, everyone! They’re not coming for us. We have the queen’s promise.”

  Liza screamed again. Xavier, who was at her side, tried to calm her.

  Dawna said, “I think Karl’s right. If they wanted to gobble us up, they would have done it already. Plus I didn’t get any card readings with us getting eaten by those things.”

  The group fell silent, watching the enormous timewyrm slither down the mountain toward the broken windows.

  Margaret asked in a whisper, “What are they doing? Did they come to make sure we got safely home and didn’t stick around to mess up their world?”

  Nobody had an answer.

  The group watched as the timewyrm was joined by two more of its kind. The three enormous creatures plunged in through the broken windows all at once. These ones were too big for the windows, though. Their bodies obliterated the walls between the windows, ripping a huge hole in the side of the mountain. The ground beneath Zinnia’s feet shook. As the timewyrms disappeared from sight, the mountain rumbled as though being hollowed out by explosives.

  The noise continued for about ten minutes.

  And then, all at once, the timewyrms wriggled out of the side of the mountain and slithered away. A cloud of dust wafted down from the dark hole.

  Thirty minutes later, the group had wordlessly climbed the mountain path. They entered the cave anxiously, holding up their borrowed lanterns so they could survey the damage.

  It was exactly as bad as Zinnia had expected.

  The timewyrms had obliterated the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. What had once been a floor abandoned during construction was now a cave full of rubble, broken support rods, and scraps of metal.

  Zinnia set down her lantern and ran toward the elevator doors. The sliding metal doors had been eviscerated. They lay on the floor in ruins. Where the doors and the call button with the keyhole had previously been, now there was only solid rock and more rubble. No keyhole, no way to open the elevator portal. No portal, no going home.

  Behind Zinnia, everyone was talking at once, coming to the same conclusion with varying levels of panic and dismay.

  Zinnia sank to her knees.

  Their only way home had been destroyed by the timewyrms.

  She picked up a rock and threw it with all her strength against the wall.

  Chapter 35

  “Calm down, everyone,” blustered Karl, spit flying from his mouth. “We won’t solve this problem if everyone’s talking at once.”

  Everyone ignored Karl’s blustering and continued to argue.

  “This is the volcano ending,” Gavin said. “The bad outcome that Dawna foresaw with her reading on the tarot cards.”

  “That can’t be,” Margaret said, dumbfounded. “This can’t be how it all ends.”

  “Look around,” Gavin
said. “We’re inside a mountain, which is basically a volcano. Same shape.”

  “But there’s no lava,” Margaret said. “This is not going to be the volcano ending.” She stamped her foot. “I have to get home for my kids. They can’t grow up without a mother.”

  “The lava will be along any minute now,” Gavin said. “Then we’ll see who’s right and who’s wrong.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Margaret glared at the gnome. “You’d love for lava to come shooting up from the floor of this cave right now, just to prove you’re right.”

  “We’ve got to stay calm,” blustered Karl, not that anyone was listening.

  “I know the difference between a volcano and a mountain,” Dawna said. “If the cards had told me about a mountain, I would have said it was a mountain. I might be new at this stuff, but I know what a volcano is.”

  “A volcano can look like an ordinary mountain before it erupts,” Gavin insisted.

  “Stop jinxing us,” Margaret said, waving her arms frantically. “Haven’t you ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy? If you keep saying this mountain is going to be a volcano, you might make it happen. We don’t know how magic works in this place!”

  “Stop yelling, both of you,” Dawna said. “You’re upsetting the youngsters.”

  They turned to look at Liza and Xavier.

  Liza sat near the edge of the cave, rocking back and forth with her hands covering her ears. “I won’t go back there,” she chanted. “I won’t. They can’t make me go back.”

  Xavier also looked upset, his face grim and shining with sweat as he worked silently, kneeling in the debris and digging through the rubble with both hands. One of his fingers was bleeding.

  Karl looked over Xavier’s shoulder. “What are you doing, son? You’ve cut your hand. You should be wearing gloves.”

  “We don’t have any gloves,” Xavier muttered. “We don’t have anything useful. You came to rescue us, and all you brought was useless potions.”

  The others exchanged serious looks.