by Horn, J. D.
“Emily never intended for you to grow to an adult. They meant to end you as a baby.” She shuddered at the thought. “If the other anchors had known who you really were, they would have taken you away from me. They would have sought some way to dissolve you as Mercy without bringing down the line. Failing that, they would have locked you away. Tried to contain you. They would have fumbled around until the line was destroyed as sure as if they were working for Emily themselves.”
“As above, so below,” I said. Anything the anchors tried to do would have filtered out through the line as a whole. Dissolve Mercy, end the line. Contain Mercy, trap the line. Either way, their actions would have been the end. They would never have let me be, and as soon as they started in, the rebel families would have piled on. They almost had me as a grown woman. As a small girl, I would have never stood a chance. “The anchors think of themselves as my masters, not as my partners.” I had tried for millennia to free myself from their grasp.
“I had to protect you from them. I had to protect you from Emily.” Ginny’s body heaved with heavy sobs. “I had to let Ellen lose Paul. I couldn’t risk the other anchors finding out about you.” Ginny pushed back from my arms to look at me. “When that other boy got run over in front of her shop, he was hurt too badly. His injuries should have killed him. Ellen didn’t have enough power to bring that boy back like she did. The anchors knew that. What they didn’t know was she drew the magic from you.”
I remembered watching as she laid her hands on the broken boy, wishing she could save him. Willing that she would. And save him she had. She had managed to pull him right back from the tunnel of light that had called him. Afterward, I had avoided Ellen for days, afraid of her awesome power. Now I knew I had been afraid of seeing my own reflection.
“I couldn’t risk letting her draw power from you again. The other anchors were suspicious. We were being watched . . .” Her voice trailed off as she relived that dark day. “Oh, how my beautiful Ellen hated me after Paul’s death. I saw it in her eyes every time she looked at me. The whole family hated me.” Her eyes looked deep into my own. “Perhaps you most of all.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I had to ask you to give up your own life, your own happiness for this.”
“No. I dedicated my life to a cause. A cause I believe in to the very depths of my soul.” She released herself from my embrace. “There is no shame in that. It was an honor to act as your protector. To help you keep the demons who would destroy our world at bay.” With those words, she faded from sight. I reached out, trying to bring her back.
“No, no, no, child,” Jilo said and shook her head. “You let her go now. She’s been waiting to see you this one last time, but that old girl has earned her peace.” All animation left Jilo’s tired face. “I think this old girl is about ready for a little peace herself. You think you can handle things on your own from here?”
“I don’t know what—” I started to protest, but she grabbed my hand in hers.
“Of course you know what to do. This bell of theirs, it’s counterfeit, but it’s still powerful. They may not have created a sun, but they sure as hell strapped together a pack of atom bombs. Emily, she put you here thinking that its power combined with all those damned anchors trying to put an end to you would whisk the line away, totally undo you. She think this power hers. That she can use it to destroy.”
“She’s wrong, though, isn’t she?”
“Damned right she wrong, my girl.” Jilo pulled me into a tight embrace, her thin arms like bands of steel. I felt it. She never wanted to let me go, but she knew she had to. For her sake, and for mine too. She picked up on the intentions that had begun to form within me.
This place. This void, artificial or no, would allow me to try my own hand at creation, or at least recasting the world that had been. Tiny surgical cuts to the timeline, a changed decision here, a different action there, perhaps I could set things right for those I loved. “Damn, girl. Don’t get all carried away. You can’t reach back and yank the apple out of Eve’s mouth. You can’t reach back any further than when Emily done conjured you into the world.”
“Yes, I understand,” I said.
“And you understand the other bit too, don’t you?”
“Yes.” I understood, even better than she did. The spell had been broken. No matter what else I might manage to achieve, the one fact I couldn’t change was that Mercy Taylor had never really existed.
THIRTY-FOUR
Change a word here, a word there. We’re not talking about rewriting the history of the world, just a judicious editing of events that are truly minor in the grand scheme of things. There may be a momentary sense of confusion, an uneasy déjà vu, but the chattering of seven billion minds will join in to drown out those odd but passing sensations. History might cough, but in a day or so, it will feel just fine.
A young woman lies on a bloodstained bed. The color of her hair is very nearly a match for the color of the life that has been bleeding out of her. Ellen holds the stillborn child, reaching into the deepest well of her magic, and when that seems to be failing, matches magic with prayer. “Come on little one,” she whispers. “Come on.” The baby is blue. It doesn’t move. Perhaps the child had never truly been meant for this world. “Don’t you do this to me. You breathe. Take a breath. One small breath for Ellen.” The child gasps for air and cries. Ellen can’t suppress the sound that peals from her, a groan that speaks of the deepest relief mixed with joy. She turns back toward the mother, reaching out with her magic to grab the escaping spark and hold on to it for dear life, but she realizes her aid has come too late. The spark is at first just out of grasp, then fading as it moves away at an exponentially increasing speed. Before Ellen can blink, it has moved beyond the veil. Ellen sits on the foot of the bed and clutches the orphan tightly to her chest.
Iris closes Emily’s eyes. Iris blames herself. She should’ve taken better care of her little sister. Played a more active role in her life. Emily had seemed so lost since Mama and Daddy died. Then again, so has Iris. No time for self-pity now, though. She will find time to fall apart. Later. Now, Ellen sits crying and rocking a little girl who’s just lost her mother. Iris goes to the foot of the bed and kneels before Ellen. A wave of anger strikes Iris out of the blue. Why had Emily been so stubbornly insistent about not telling them who the baby’s father is? The child has the right to grow up with at least one of her parents. Then again, Iris has heard rumors her baby sister had been venturing into places better left alone. That club she’d been going to, what is it called? Tillandsia. Iris has heard stories about what went on at those gatherings. It may be that Emmy herself wasn’t sure of the child’s sire.
“The baby is out of danger now?” Iris asks her sister. Ellen trembles, won’t or can’t speak, but she begins nodding. “Then you’ve done all you can do. Let me have her, sweetie,” Iris says to Ellen. “Let me take her and clean her up. Then I’ll give her right back to you. I promise.”
“Emmy wanted to name her Maisie,” Ellen says.
“And so we shall.” Iris has never really cottoned to the name Maisie. It strikes her as a somewhat unfortunate choice. Had Iris ever had a daughter, she would have named her Adeline, after her own mother. “Come to Auntie Iris, Maisie. I’ll take good care of you.” She places her first gentle touch on the newborn. “Oh,” she says aloud, shocked by a psychic form of static electricity. Well, this, she thinks, is something Erik and Ellen will have to work out between themselves. She takes the baby from her sister’s arms.
A young man, so hurt, so angry, stands at an open door. A heated exchange is occurring between him and a dark woman, beautiful, proud, too young to understand the danger of pushing a desperate lovesick fool a step too far.
“If you believe Adam really loves you, then prove it to me.” Oliver pauses, the darkest of thoughts fighting its way to the surface. The one bit of magic he couldn’t perform, that it came so easily to
her made him physically ill. Grace would give birth to Adam’s baby. No matter what, she would always have a hold on him. She stood there gloating, taunting. It would be oh so easy to make her undo it.
An unseen hand on his shoulder, a whisper to his heart. A reminder of what true love means. The words that have begun to form fall away, replaced with “You raise that baby right.” His face turns red, and his body shakes. “You hear me? You fall one step short of being the most perfect mother this world has ever seen, and I will come for you. Believe me, I will. Now get the hell out of here and leave me the hell alone.” Oliver slams the door in Grace’s face.
A man raises his hand to strike his wife. Iris doesn’t know why, but this time something snaps within her. “No, not this time,” she says, raising her own hand and sending her husband flying against the wall. His eyes open wide with surprise. He struggles to stand, but finds he has been pinned in place.
Iris’s sister has died, and she’s been left to raise her girl. She had hoped she could count on Connor’s stepping up and being a father to Maisie. God knows her real daddy isn’t stepping up. He isn’t even owning up. But no, Iris is not going to raise the girl in a house with a man who’d ever consider hitting his wife. She can’t risk Maisie growing up believing on any level that this way of life is okay. If it had only been for her own sake, Iris isn’t sure if she’d ever have found the strength, but it isn’t just about her anymore. Connor squirms and tries to free himself, but defying all gravity, he begins to slide up the wall. His head bumps roughly against the ceiling.
“Pack a bag and get out of here.” Iris lowers her hand, and the man who just stopped being her husband tumbles to the floor. “You got five minutes.”
The rain falls so heavily it’s nearly impossible to see the road. The semitruck ahead jackknifes. Not enough time for thought, let alone magic. The father dies on impact, but by some miracle, just the slightest amount of additional force holds the boy tight against the seat as the car flips and rolls for what seems to him like an eternity.
Ellen rushes to the hospital, nearly crashing en route herself. At the sight of Paul, she snatches him into her arms, rocking her son as she holds him tightly to her breast. Paul is traumatized by his father’s death. He cries for Ellen as he endures X-rays and examinations, but in the end everyone is left to wonder at the accident that took the father, but left the son without a scratch.
A young woman lies on a bloodstained bed. The color of her hair is very nearly a match for the color of the sunshine flooding through the window. Ellen and Iris look at each other, and in that silent stare promise never to tell Maisie or her redheaded giant how close they’d come to losing both Maisie and their boy.
It had come with no warning. Maisie had gone from a perfectly normal pregnancy to crisis in a matter of minutes. Iris reckons sometimes it just happens that way. To look at them both now, mother and child, you would never guess they had ever been in the tiniest shred of danger.
“Go on,” Iris says and smiles at Peter. “Go call your parents. They are going to want to see this carrottop boy of yours.”
Peter is not budging. “You okay?” One hand holds tight to his wife’s, the other lies carefully on his son’s back.
“Yeah,” Maisie says, and for the first time in her life, she feels she really means it. “I’m incredible. Aunt Iris is right. Claire will take a switch to you if she finds out you made her wait a second longer than she had to.”
“Go on, we’ll get everyone cleaned up and presentable.” Iris gives her final command. She watches her sister leave the bedside and cross to look out the window. Maisie begins singing a lullaby, the same Iris remembers singing to her, about a place called Cill Airne, a place neither of them has ever seen.
Iris joins Ellen by the window. “I guess you can take a family out of Ireland, but you can’t—” The look in her sister’s eyes makes her words run dry. Ellen stares at the horizon, as if she can see something there Iris can’t.
Ellen’s eyes fill with tears. “I didn’t fail her, not this time.”
Iris shakes her head and pulls Ellen into her arms. “No, sweetheart, you didn’t fail Maisie at all.”
Ellen seems confused. “I don’t mean Maisie.”
Iris strokes Ellen’s hair. “You mean Emily, don’t you?”
Ellen considers the question. “Emily? No.” She pushes back from Iris’s embrace. “Honestly, I don’t know who I mean. Something just seems a bit off.”
“You’ve just worn yourself out. That’s all,” Iris says. “You go rest up a bit. I’ll take care of things here.”
Ellen hesitates. She wraps her arms around herself and tosses a nervous glance in Maisie’s direction. “You sure?”
“I’m sure. Everything here is in good hands.”
An arthritic hand hovers over the telephone receiver. Jilo has lifted it and returned it to its cradle ten times over. She’s an old woman, and she knows her end is near. Jilo grimaces. She doesn’t have time to pussyfoot around like this. She’s held on to her sister’s secret for years now, throwing all the hate she could find within herself against the Taylors. But then that fool Ginny went and got herself killed, and, well, somehow all the hate seems like too heavy of a burden to carry on her own.
She’s been watching the younger Taylors. Oh, sure, they’re snooty all right, but at the end of the day, they aren’t really bad people. And Jilo feels it in her aching bones: she has arrived at the end of the day.
She feels moved for reasons she can’t really understand to see to it that her sister’s children and grandchildren spend a bit of time getting to know the cracker side of their kin. Right now, she can’t remember why she ever felt otherwise. They might love each other, or they might wring each other’s necks, but that is none of her nevermind. They deserve the chance, regardless of the outcome. She stares at the avocado-green phone with its square of gray buttons. Finally she summons her determination and dials the number scrawled in pencil on the back of a used envelope. The dialed number begins ringing, and she very nearly hangs up, but a voice on the other end says, “Hello?”
Jilo hesitates. She can’t understand what is possessing her to do this, but doing this she is.
“Hello?” the voice on the other end says again.
“Hello. This is Jilo Wills. We have to talk.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Forsyth Park was nearly filled to capacity, but Iris and Ellen had claimed a spot for the family picnic in the shade of what had become known to the Taylor-Tierney clan as “the climbing tree.” Three blankets, six lawn chairs, and a touch of magic formed the boundary.
It would be a perfect Fourth. Mid-eighties, and for once a blessed streak of low humidity had claimed Savannah as its own. Ellen took off her sunglasses and placed them on top of her head. “I have to tell you, every time I look at that cooler, I think of Jilo.”
Iris smiled. “Hers was red. This one is blue,” she said, but seemed incapable of convincing herself. “No. I see what you mean. Who knows? Maybe it means somehow she is still here with us.”
“And ready to play referee just in case this little family reunion goes awry,” Ellen said and laughed. Then her expression softened, grew more serious. “Why do you think, after all those years of keeping Daddy’s other children a secret, she broke down and told us?”
Iris pulled one of the chairs closer. “I don’t know. She and Ginny squabbled so for decades, even though sometimes I swear those two were flip sides of the same coin. I think Ginny’s death made her realize her own mortality. Maybe she just wanted to make some form of amends.”
“Maybe she felt guilt for having cozied up to the demon that killed Ginny.”
“Possibly, but I think it went deeper than that. Those two old girls shared a connection. I can’t even hazard a guess what it was, but I think with Ginny gone, the dam Jilo had built broke. She chose to clean up her side of the street before she
passed on herself.”
“Are you nervous about meeting them?”
“Frankly, yes. If the rest of them are anything like Jessamine, well, then we’ve got our work cut out for us.” Iris sighed. “A lot has changed since Ginny’s passing.”
It had been a little over two years since what witches had come to call the “Great Shift” occurred on the heels of Ginny’s death. Somehow her demise had triggered an end of an era, no, the end of an epoch. The line still stood, that life on earth as we knew it continued was testimony enough to that fact, but the line had broken free from its anchors, seemingly of its own will. The historians of the line, witches like Iris herself, had only found one other similar shift such as this. The last was when the line was decoupled from the great monuments that had served as its original anchors, and was bound instead to the living anchors who had shouldered the burden of the line for millennia. That first shift had been debated, voted on, and carefully orchestrated. This change had occurred in a blink of an eye without a soul’s having seen it coming.
“Everyone’s magic is crazy now,” Ellen said. “Witches who were once quite capable can now barely bend a spoon with both hands, and others who’d been perfectly average are accidently blowing doors off their cabinets.”
“We are still in a period of adjustment, but in the end we will adjust.” Iris felt something tickle her ear, and she swatted, thinking a bug had landed on her. “I wonder if the old rumor was true after all?”
“Which old rumor?” Ellen asked and laughed. “I’ve lost count.”
Ellen was right. If Iris chose to apply herself, she could collect a canon of purported truths and old witches’ tales concerning the line. Maybe with the Great Shift, she ought to do just that. Save the stories for posterity. “We’ve always been told that witches get our power from the line. The rumor is that the exact opposite is true. That the anchors used the line to control all magic and parcel it out in the way they saw fit. Maybe the line has rebalanced things, or even left us capable of what we naturally should be without the help or drag of others.”
