Tracking Magic

by Maria E. Schneider

  "It's a turtle!" Amber exclaimed.

  Without leaning any closer, I breathed again, trying to sort magic from death. The smell of moist earth could be either, but it had not rained here, so it could very well be magic. There was a heavy cloth smell again too. The name, Antonia Pacheco, ended with the turtle symbol as though it were part of the name. There were no dates.

  "Dad?" Amber let go of my hand and returned to stand at the gate to the small plot. Hands on her hips she said, "Dad, this isn't funny!"

  Amber pulled out her fairy light and held it up high. The name on the gate was Cordova. I turned back to the gravestone. The glowing name had faded completely. The turtle...I leaned forward. The smell of earth was strong. Was it really a turtle? What had been outlined in magic was now nothing more than a scratch on the marble.

  "Can you bring that light back over here?"

  Amber stomped back over. "I know it's him."

  The light illuminated the faded outline of a turtle. "Turtles live a long time." I snapped my fingers. "We're looking for a turtle!"

  Amber stared at me as though I had lost my mind. "A real one?"

  "Hmm." Spells could involve real animals. Or they could be objects shaped to hold the magic of the real item. I had heard of turtles representing long, prosperous lives. I didn't know the spell or whether it required a real turtle. "So, uh, do you know where I can find a turtle?"

  She shook her head. "We'll have to find dad. You want a burger first?"

  With a suggestion like that, I think I was falling in love.

  # # #

  Amber's dad was more than happy to open his house, his graveyards, and his workshop to us. This was not the sign of a guilty man. Even better than letting me sniff through the house, he was willing to provide a guest room, which by midnight was even more important.

  Though I was in a strange place, under very strange circumstances, I rested well.

  Next morning, I insisted on returning to the dwellings.

  We spent a good part of the morning searching along the small stream. Amber was still positive her dad had the talisman, but since I had stayed in the guest room and witnessed his easy-going manner, I was almost certain she was wrong.

  Magic had been throughout the house, but not in the form of a turtle. I recognized some of it from my grandfather and avoided anything that reminded me of The Hag. The Hag's magic was still around even though she currently refused to live there.

  As I wandered along the stream, I did a lot of deep breathing. My lung muscles were going to hurt almost as much as my hiking legs. There was magic, but no turtles. Two or three small rocks were shaped like turtles. The best looking rock-turtle was a large boulder that could have formed a door for the cave and never would have fit inside a corn cob.

  After two turns past the cliff, it was time to climb.

  "I've been up here several times," Amber said. "Now that we know what is missing, what do you hope to find?"

  "Nothing," I replied honestly. "I think the turtle is gone."

  "Mom isn't going to be happy about that. Do you really think the turtle came to life and left?"

  "Many a talisman has a way of...leaving whether they are alive or not. They drop, fall, get stuck to clothing...or swallowed by an animal." By this time, we were at the cave entrance. Out of what had become a very pleasant habit, I reached for her hand. In my other hand, I held a decent-sized fairy globe we had borrowed from her dad.

  The walls were mostly bare, other than the ancient smoke-stains. Drawings were hard to come by. As with most things, I resorted to trying to sniff out a clue. The magic was much stronger than I expected and it smelled of...

  The fairy globe, a rather expensive model, flew backwards out of my hand, smashing against the wall. It shattered with a burst of foreign light.

  "Worthless!" The Hag yelled, stepping out from a chamber just past where we had found the corncob. Her hand was raised and another bolt was imminent.

  Fairy lights glittered, floating free, making it hard for me to hide. "Agggh!" I ducked another lightning bolt, hitting the ground with a roll.

  "Where is it?" she yelled.

  "Mom!" Amber jumped in front of me, taking a direct hit. I grabbed for her, horrified.

  "Amber!" I put my hands around her and frantically searched for damage, not even knowing if the lightning bolt would leave any blood to stop.

  I finally got her turned around.

  My hands stopped groping, but my mouth remained opened. Her t-shirt wasn't even ripped.

  "What are you doing here?" The Hag demanded of Amber.

  "I'm helping Max."

  "Did you just absorb that magic?" I sniffed, but smelled...nothing. That was impressive. Very impressive. I had never met anyone that could absorb magic--or a lightning bolt for that matter.

  "Mom isn't always accurate," Amber said. "I had to adapt to a lot of flying spells."

  The accuracy statement was certainly true, but in this case, the bolt had been dead-on. I had seen it and Amber had totally neutralized it. Wow.

  "Where is my talisman?" The Hag demanded.

  I finally switched my attention from Amber to The Hag. "You didn't find it here again?"

  "If it were here, would I be old?" She slapped her cane against the ground to emphasize her point.

  "Have you tried to recreate the spell from scratch? There must have been a painting or the actual talisman or something to tell you how to use the youth spell. I'm guessing that if you're going to get it to work, you're going to have to start over." With the receding fairy lights, I could see that the adobe was full of pits and lines. All kinds of carvings could be imagined there. The walls had little to offer, but one corner had stains of reddish and black paint. I crouched.

  "Is this it?" The etchings on the wall might have been a turtle. "Who is Antonia Pacheco?"

  The Hag raised her cane as though she might hit me. Amber made a noise and the cane went back down. "Who told you about her?"

  "Antonia did."

  The Hag slanted her eyes to her daughter. Amber nodded. "Either she or dad did. Max is pretty sure it wasn't dad."

  The Hag snorted. "Your father wouldn't tell me anything she said even if I asked." With a large sigh and leaning heavily on her cane, she lowered herself to the floor. "She used to talk to me."

  "And she taught you the spell for youth?"

  "It's gone for good, isn't it?"

  "Dad still might--" Amber started.

  "Your father didn't take it," The Hag said. "I thought he had it, but I've searched every graveyard. All I see is death. I've used every spell I have to trace it, but they all come back here. But it isn't here."

  "The talisman...or the magic is probably still here," I told her. "But you're missing a crucial element to the spell so it no longer works."

  "Never! I know the spell perfectly."

  "Except for one thing. Your only dream is to stay young. Youth without a dream is wasted. The spell refused to work. You need a dream to keep you young."

  Her mouth gaped open.

  "Pacheco must be your Indian relation," I guessed.

  Her mouth closed. "Maybe. But what happened to the turtle?"

  I shrugged. "It wandered off."

  She started to argue the point, but it was moot, and we both knew it. A talisman didn't have to be alive to wander. We both looked at the drawing on the wall. The turtle in the drawing, if it was a turtle, seemed to be reaching up, almost as if it were striving for a goal--or a dream.

  I sighed. I couldn't get the talisman back for my client. Its magic was gone so far as The Hag was concerned. "I'm stuck here, aren't I?"

  "I can send you home," she said.

  Except that a witch without confidence and not a lot of hope wasn't a witch that I really wanted working such a spell. I felt like sliding to the floor and sharing her despair for a moment.

  "What's the big deal with you going home?" Amber asked. "Can't you just drive back?"

  I blinked at her.

  Th
e Hag gave a cackle. "I didn't bring him in a transporter. I guess he could buy one." She cackled again at her own joke.

  "Or I could take you." Amber looked at her mother, rather than me.

  My heart kind of hiccuped, but then my spirits went right through the ceiling of the cave. Amber could take me home! That was...shoot, at least another day in her company. Without a spell between us. Without her parents in the background. And...I stopped before I could get too carried away. It took another moment for me to straighten my face into something that wasn't a drooling grin.

  "Would you?" I asked.

  "Why not?"

  "You don't owe him anything," The Hag said. "I can send him back. Although I already paid him for two days, and he didn't find my Object."

  "Yes, I did. Your Object is still here. You didn't lose the Object so much as you lost the reason for it." I met her gaze. Someone, either her husband or her dead relative, had probably already told her as much already. "From what I understand, you need a dream to keep you young."

  With a grumble, she pulled herself to her feet. "At seventy-two, I shouldn't have to dream." She straightened her aging back and made her way towards the outer chamber. "Should be able to eat what I want. Do what I want. Dreams." She snorted. "What does a seventy-two year old woman dream about?" She glanced back at Amber and then me. "Hmph." Slapping her cane heavily, she continued out.

  I smiled at Amber. "You really don't mind driving me back to Texas?"

  She shrugged. "It's the least I can do since mother got you into this mess."

  As I reached for her hand, I was fairly certain one of the small rocks in the corner moved, but it may have just been a trick of the dying fairy light or a pebble, shifting.

  It probably wasn't a turtle.

  I wasn't sure meeting the possible love-of-my-life by being delivered airborne through an outhouse was Fate, but I was pretty sure that Somewhere, Someone out in the cosmos was laughing.

  Magic was a strange beast. So were women. Who could beat a combination like that?

  THE END

  Other Works

  The following is an excerpt from Under Witch Moon, an urban fantasy.

  Under Witch Moon Summary

  Adriel should have known that with a werewolf, it never stopped with just one body. She would have gone to the police after witnessing Dolores' death, but she wasn't certain the killer she saw was responsible for the other murders. Besides, the police didn't believe in werewolves, and they weren't going to believe she was a witch either so what could she tell them?

  She kept her eyes and ears open while she tried to help her latest client escape the clutches of a voodoo witch, but things went from bad to worse when more bodies turned up. She was greatly relieved when she met White Feather, an undercover cop. Unfortunately, he wasn't convinced she was innocent of all wrong-doing.

  It was going to take every spell she knew and a few she hadn't tried to solve the murders and stay alive.

  Under Witch Moon

  Chapter 1

  Being a witch isn't easy. It's smelly, grueling work. I'm not talking about magic. Magic is a power that comes from natural forces. I'm talking about witchery, the chemical reactions for spells. Mind you, I dabble in magic; most witches do, but the bulk of my work involves a lot of formulas. It's a chore like any, much like caulking a house--messy, stinky and the results don't last forever.

  Yes, spells wear out. They sometimes glue themselves to the wrong thing or dry too fast or don't dry at all. When I'm finished, I need a bath and in some cases, just as paint needs turpentine, I need special solutions to rid myself of the chemicals that have made themselves at home on my person.

  At present, I was working on a spell for protection. It was an easy spell and thankfully cleaner than most. Salt, a purifier and element that worked well against rogue spirits, was the main ingredient. While it was wonderfully effective, it was unfortunately, quick to break down. The main job of a witch in this case was to make sure the salt didn't degrade too quickly. Rich patrons paid me to mix it in gold or silver.

  I preferred silver myself. It provided additional protection against evil spirits, including vampires and shifters. Gold was better for other types of spells, plus it was coveted by all, which meant that patrons expected me to include a spell of illusion so that the protection object didn't get stolen--but those same clients wanted the object to be beautiful, so it was therefore coveted by anyone who happened to see it anyway.

  Being a witch was indeed an onerous task. If people accepted us, they wanted the impossible. If they didn't, they wanted to burn us at the stake.

  Never mind all that. The important thing when working with metals, as I was now, was to make certain of its purity. I didn't care if a customer told me he dug it out of a mountain with his bare hands under a full moon. Santa Fe, along with most of New Mexico, was chock full of old Aztec gold and silver, and let me tell you, those people could imbue nasty spirits like no other.

  I had to burn my entire house to the ground once when working with contaminated gold. I still looked over my shoulder on moonless nights, because I wasn't certain I contained the evil spirit back in that lump of gold.

  My new house had a special room made from concrete walls covered in adobe brick, covered in stucco. Mud had the wonderful ability to soak up any number of bad things. Stucco had only one important feature--chicken wire. When coated with the right ingredients, the wire provided a nearly complete mesh of protection against many a magical ill. I only wished I had been able to dip the mesh into silver such as I was using now, fresh from the U.S. minting office.

  The mint did a great job of removing impurities, along with any bad spirits. Of course, in doing so they nearly removed silver's strong ties to mother earth. Part of my job was to make sure the silver linked again with the purity of earth. I melted it, salted it and strung it ever so carefully into magical fibers. The magic came from mother earth; it was part of the silver. And in truth, any witch worth her pay added a certain magic of her own, a heartbeat tied to mother earth, an aura if you will--the magical quality of life.

  The process of mixing, steaming, melting and salting took several days and exquisite timing. Moreover, when those things were done, I had to weave the silver thread into a careful pattern inside my chosen fabric. Given the trouble the woman was in, Dolores Garcia should have sprung for a fifty-strand liquid silver necklace instead. Such a necklace contained far more silver and wearing it would be an obvious message to a courting werewolf that she was not interested.

  I finished my client's shirt on the night of a full moon, making sure the silver threads were placed correctly. As with any project, it felt good to finish, but I was tired. I planned to deliver the shirt the next day, but as I left my workroom, the phone rang.

  "Adriel!" a voice sobbed my name and then choked to silence.

  "Dolores?" I asked, although it could be no other.

  "You must help me! Tonight. It's a full moon. It's…I can't control it, I saw him! I must have the shirt, finished or not, I can wait no longer!"

  "Tonight?" Dismay colored my voice.

  "It's a full moon! He's watching me, he's…" Her voice trembled with emotion.

  "Oh for--"

  "Please," she begged, naming a price that I could not afford to refuse.

  "Fine." I sighed and then rolled my eyes as she dictated directions to a "safe" location. She insisted the exchange take place in the middle of the desert down in an arroyo so that we didn't stand out in the moonlight. In my mind, it would have been far less suspicious had she come over for a cup of coffee--or even met me at a donut shop.

  Whatever. I had an image to uphold, and if the customer wanted me to traipse about the dusty desert after midnight, I just added it to the charge. If she didn't show up after keeping me up most of the night, I'd not only curse her, I'd sell the shirt to someone else, her silver or not.

  I got traipsing. With the full moon, I managed to reach the location without too much trouble despite the fact
that the spot Dolores had chosen was a mile from any paved road. To her credit, she was on time. From the looks of her though, I was a lot more agile in the dark.

  She wasn't any older than me; somewhere in her twenties. She should have been able to easily avoid the prickly cactus, creosote and rocky terrain, but as she approached, she was limping rather noticeably.

  She slid down into the arroyo and without ceremony, thrust out a tote bag weighted nicely with money. "Do you have it?" she whispered.

  "You won't be able to wear this shirt every single day," I warned, prepared to sell her a kerchief as an additional security measure. "A werewolf is a dangerous--"

  "Shhh," she shushed, despite the desert location.

  "This shirt will be effective, but I would advise you to purchase some additional protection," I said, exchanging the plain wrapped package for the bag of money.

  She grabbed the brown paper bundle from me and held it to her heaving chest like a long-lost teddy-bear. "At last!"

  I frowned. I was accustomed to people being grateful, especially in the case of fending off evil, but her elation was almost giddy. "It will keep the werewolf away. Once you start wearing it, he will know that you know what he is. It will make it clear you are not interested."

  She spun around in a circle, full Spanish skirts swirling around her legs. In addition to the dress, the idiot had actually worn sandals. Had she worn jeans and hiking boots like I had, maybe she wouldn't be limping.

  "He will be mine now," she declared lustily. "I can date him without fear."

  "What?" I forgot she wanted to keep our meeting a secret. "Are you crazy? He's an animal!"

  "We're all animals! He just happens to be two animals, his were-person and his…person-person."

  "That would be were-wolf," I emphasized. "Not were-person. The whole point is that he is an animal at times, with animal instincts and animal reactions."