Red

by Amy Stilgenbauer

“Ferns don’t bloom,” she said to herself after yet another failed attempt at getting a frond to flower. “Grandmere LaRoux must have just...” She didn’t want to say she had been crazy. It wasn’t too unusual. A lot of her books of folklore actually did reference this mystical flower, but even a witch had to admit that not everything in her books of folklore was necessarily real. If only she could get a hold of that red book Grandmere LaRoux had been reading.

  But she hadn’t really been reading it. Looking back, it occurred to Opaline that the book was telling Grandmere LaRoux the story; the way it pulsed with red light must have held the key.

  She shook her head, pushing the idea from her mind. It didn’t matter. Getting a hold of the book now would be an impossibility. Even if Grandmere LaRoux had been willing to loan it out, which was doubtful, Opaline’s letter had come back stamped “Address Unknown”. Her last connection to the mystery was gone. Maybe it was time to give up.

  A light knocking drew Opaline out of her thoughts. “Abe?”

  No voice answered. Only more knocking followed.

  “Abe, is that you?”

  The knocking grew louder.

  “Raymond?” She drew closer to the door, a feeling of apprehensive nausea in her stomach. “Cerise?”

  Still, only knocking.

  Opaline unlatched the door and pushed it open. At first she saw nothing. The hall leading to the root cellar was dark and damp as ever, but then a sound echoed down the corridor of retreating footsteps. “Who’s there?” She called, but did not expect an answer.

  She started down the hall to follow, but something shiny on the floor caught her eye. Hesitating only a moment, she reached down to pick it up. When Opaline saw the Polaroid; an image of her and Clarissa on Belle Isle, she gasped.

  “Clarissa!” She called down the corridor when her breath returned. “Clarissa! Don’t run. Come back.”

  She raced to the stairs leading up to the rest of house. The front door slammed shut and whoever had been in the cellar was gone. Instead of bothering to follow, she sat down on the sofa and stared at the picture. She knew Abe would be down soon. There was no way he could sleep through the sound of front door opening and closing. He was far too protective.

  Though she hadn’t thought about it in years, the day of the photograph was crystal clear in her memory: the pair of them tracking around the island in search of the ghosts and snake goddesses that supposedly lived there. They found little more than Canadian Geese, but it had been a splendid day. Opaline wondered if it was some kind of message. Maybe the key to the fern flower was on Belle Isle.

  No sooner had the thought occurred to her, she shook her head to rid her mind of it. This obsession was becoming too much. It was time to let it go; just remember the good times. Maybe that was what Clarissa had been trying to say. Just let go.

  8.

  Detroit Medical Center. 2013

  When Clarissa came to, she was sobbing. She wasn’t entirely sure why. It took several minutes of the tears flowing down her face before she remembered where she was; who she was; what she was; why she was here; why she was crying. She shook her head several times. “No. None of it’s true. You’re lying.”

  Moira rolled her eyes. Even in her frustrated despair, Clarissa could understand the look on her face: irritation. Clearly, Moira was used to being believed.”Look,” she said, the annoyance becoming even more obvious when she spoke. “You’re a spirit of pessimism. That’s who you are. You can’t change it.”

  Clarissa didn’t accept Moira's words. She couldn’t. No confirmation the nurse could offer would be enough for her to accept that her role in this world was to be a harbinger of doom. “Yes, I can change it. I have far too much hope and faith in me to do anything else.”

  “When the people of this city see your true form, they run from you. You mean their destruction.”

  “Why? Why must I mean that? I love this city. It’s my home.”

  “So was Pompeii,” Moira scoffed.

  “Pompeii? I’ve lived here my whole life. This is the only city I have ever known.” Clarissa was getting angry again. She felt the desire to tear something apart rise. The bar holding the plastic curtain began to bend.

  “It was someone’s home too, is all I’m saying.” Moira held up her pendant again as if it protected her. Clarissa wanted to rip it from her throat.

  “You’re just upsetting her,” Opaline interjected. “Clarissa is far too kind to be a spirit of destruction. She’s always been a protector. She’s a nurse – like you claim to be.”

  Moira rolled her eyes.”She’s pessimism!”

  Clarissa didn’t believe Opaline any more than she believed Moira. Opaline had kept all of this from her. Maybe if she had said something right away, but no...no there had to be a different explanation. “If anything, I am a spirit of ambition...protection. It just happens to have a dark side too.”

  Opaline reached out and touched Clarissa’s arm. She thought about shaking her off, but something about the gesture was comforting. “Clarissa...while you were gone...I was thinking...about the fern flower...”

  Moira scoffed loudly, but Clarissa ignored her. “It was destroyed. Cadillac destroyed it.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe there’s more than one...I...do you remember that day we went to Belle Isle.”

  For the first time since she had awoken in 2013, Clarissa laughed. “To find the snake goddess?”

  “I think maybe...she might know.”

  Moira scoffed again.

  “Do you know something we don’t?” Clarissa ask bitterly. “Or do you just think you do?”

  “No...no...you kids go run around Belle Isle. Be my guest.” She waved a hand toward the window where dark clouds were amassing.

  Clarissa still felt suspicious. She stood up and walked again toward Moira. “Thank you for all your help. I will -never- forget your name.” She found it oddly satisfying that the nurse trembled just a little before hurrying out. For the second time since waking up in 2013, she laughed.

  9.

  Raymond complained loudly that he wasn’t keen on his seventy-seven year old mother traipsing around Belle Isle with one of her old school friends, also in her seventies, even if she only looked twenty-five. Still Opaline was adamant that she accompany Clarissa to the island, so he drove. It was the only concession he would allow.

  “Keep your eyes peeled for a white doe,” Clarissa said at least once every five minutes. Raymond nodded, but he wasn’t really listening or looking.

  He knew about his mother’s magic. It would have been hard for him to deny it. She had taught it to both him and Cerise since they were toddlers. Still, there were some more fantastical elements, such as end-of-the-world prophecies involving his niece, time-traveling, and snake goddesses, that simply defied his understanding. He could accept an ancestral magic that used herbal cures and could predict rain, but nothing more fantastic that that. Even if he had seen a few Brownies in his time. They were useful and sometimes fixed his work boots if he left them sweets.

  “I can’t believe Cerise is missing this,” he muttered to himself, knowing his sister would be much more appreciative of the mystical endeavors.

  “Cerise,” Clarissa mused. “She must be what...in her fifties now?...I can’t even imagine it.”

  “She has a daughter about your age,” Opaline replied cagily.

  Clarissa just shook her head. “I’ll never think of her as anything other than that little girl who called me Lalissa.”

  Opaline laughed at the memory. “She missed you. I mean, in time she forgot, but it was hard going for awhile. 'When’s Lalissa coming to visit?' Over and over again.”

  “I’m sorry, Opaline.”

  “It’s not like you could control it.”

  “About...everything...not just that.”

  Opaline shook her head, looking at her son momentarily. “Don’t. Past is past.”

  Raymond pretended he couldn’t hear them. He didn’t want to intrude on his mother’s pr
ivacy. A woman in her seventies was entitled to a secret or two or twelve. He pulled the truck off onto a marshy wooded side street. If he didn’t know that he was just minutes from a major urban center, he could easily have imagined himself back home wandering the woods and fields he grew up in. The island was an interesting place, though he was sure it had looked very different back in his mother’s college years.

  He looked off into the woods surrounding them and thought he saw something move. He peered closer and could more easily make out the shape, snow white as it moved between the trees. Raymond could see quite clearly why someone would mistake it for a ghost. He almost proclaimed it one himself until he noticed it walking on four legs.

  “I think I found your deer,” he said, dumbstruck.

  His mother and Clarissa both turned at once. When they saw the white doe, they gasped. It sounded strange to hear his mother react in such a youthful way. He had always known her as a stoic, practical woman. A strange worry ran through him, but he didn’t understand it’s purpose.

  “How do we talk to her?” Clarissa asked, sounding quite uncertain.

  “I’ll call her.”

  Before Raymond could intercede, Opaline had climbed out of the pickup and was bending down, her hands a few inches above the grasses growing at the edge of the road. He had seen her do this before: once, when a vegetable patch had been filled with particularly voracious cabbage moths. His mother had gone to the field and repeated this action daily until a flock of barn swallows arrived. Within a few weeks, the moths were under control. Raymond never knew exactly what she was doing: directly calling the birds or making the area more obvious and appealing to the birds, whatever it was, he had been impressed. He was duly impressed again as the deer turned to regard them.

  “Mama...” he began, awe overcoming him as the deer seemed to examine the pickup and the old woman beside it. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that the animal was going to come over to them.

  “You can talk to animals can you?” Clarissa almost growled. Her voice had a harsh edge to it. Raymond felt a chill run through him.

  “It’s not really...” he began to explain, but when he turned back to Clarissa, he did not see the young woman who had driven out to the island with them, but a monstrous creature with fire-red eyes. “Nain Rouge.”

  The creature smirked. “Now I know why she’s looking for the fern flower...She wants it for herself.”

  “Not Mama,” Raymond said determinedly. “She’s not like that, Clarissa. You know her better. She’s your friend.”

  “I have no friends.” The creature lunged for him and Raymond reacted in the only way he could: shoving it out of the truck.

  “Mama, get in!” he called as he started the engine back up. It turned over once, but then shut down again. He turned the key once more and pressed down hard on the gas, but all the engine did was sputter. “Mama!”

  “Just a moment, Raymond. The deer is coming.”

  “Mama...we have bigger things to deal with right now.” Once again he turned the key. This time he was almost certain he heard the truck growl back at him.

  The creature was on the hood of the truck, poised to lunge at his mother. Raymond went immediately to the glove compartment where he kept his pistol. He knew his mother would never forgive him if he shot Clarissa, but he was running on pure adrenaline. He had to protect his mother at all costs.

  He shot once into a nearby tree as a warning. Both the creature and Opaline turned to look at him. His mother’s expression changed quickly from concern and confusion to one of terror.

  “Clarissa!” She half-screamed, half-chastised as the creature came into her line of sight. “Clarissa, what are you doing?”

  The creature simply barred it’s fangs in response. Raymond fired another warning shot into a tree.

  “Raymond, don’t aggravate her!”

  “What the hell else am I supposed to do?”

  “She’ll curse you.”

  “That thing will kill us!”

  “She’s not a thing. She’s a person...my friend. My best friend.”

  “Mama...that is not Clarissa.” He shot again. “Get in the car.”

  Opaline finally obliged, moving toward the passenger door. Before Raymond could react, the creature lunged forward at his mother. He shot and the deer rushed forward.

  He would give anything to turn back the clock five minutes.

  10.

  June 23, 1957. Belle Isle. Detroit, Michigan.

  As Clarissa’s Delray pulled around the curve, Opaline cried out, “Don’t hit the geese!”

  Clarissa braked a little harder than she should have. “Opaline, this car is basically new.”

  Opaline blushed and looked at her lap, apologetic. “There were a bunch of geese in the road.”

  Since Clarissa could clearly see this, she nodded. “I wouldn’t have hit them.” And she knew she wouldn’t have, despite how close the car came. She felt a small amount of pride in the fact that she’d never once hit an animal with her car. Quite frankly, she knew that if she ever did, she’d have to pull over to the side of the road and sob for a few minutes. She couldn’t bear the thought.

  “We’re going to have to get off the main road if we want to find her,” Opaline mused, eyes on the water fowl roadblock. The geese seemed to be laying down for their daily naps as opposed to continuing across.

  Clarissa tapped on her car horn. The geese did not budge. “Make them go, Opaline....”

  She laughed. “You want me to get out and chase them down...or...?”

  “It’d be a start.”

  Rarely did Clarissa expect Opaline to take her seriously, but before she knew it, Opaline had reached over, turned off the car, and pulled her out into the road toward the geese. The nearest goose raised it’s head and eyed the approaching young women in a world weary way.

  “We can’t just leave the car on the road!”

  “It’ll only take a minute.” Opaline tightened her hold on Clarissa’s hand and raced toward the geese. One of them stood up and hissed in that low menacing tone that warned of imminent attack. The pair skittered to a halt. The goose did not seem to think the threat they posed had gone. It lowered its head and hissed once more.

  “Back in the car!” Clarissa screamed, breaking away and running back. Opaline followed right on her heels. As the goose advanced on the Chevy, Clarissa practically threw it into reverse and turned off onto a different side street they had passed by earlier.

  Opaline chuckled to herself as they drove along past several picnic shelters. “You’d think I didn’t just save that goose’s life or anything.”

  “That’s geese for you. The most ungrateful of all birds.” Clarissa turned the car down another side street towards a marshier area of the woods and one of her favorite of the island’s bridges. “Now, keep your eyes peeled for the white doe...”

  “Do you really think we’ll find her this time?”

  “You never know.”

  “You really think she’s even real?”

  “Funny question coming from you.”

  When the picnic area had faded from view, Clarissa pulled the car over to the side of the road. This part of the island somehow felt calmer. She looked over at Opaline, who had taken the opportunity to get a serious look into the woods beyond the road. For the past several weeks she had noticed Opaline’s more serious side growing. It didn’t take much sleuthing to figure out why. Her wedding was in two months. She had two months to become a proper farm wife, something the spontaneous and flighty girl Clarissa knew was very far from ever being. Sure Opaline had her practical side; she was a harvest witch after all, but even that complicated matters. The young man she was marrying came from an Amish family. Clarissa didn’t know much that particular group, but from what Opaline had told her about her own family, she did know they were quite conservative. How was she to hide her magic from her own husband? It didn’t bode well to Clarissa, but she had already spoken her piece on that matter. Opaline h
ad made her choice.

  “Opaline?” She asked curiously, as she rummaged in her bag for her Polaroid.

  “Yeah?” Opaline did not look at her though. She continued to scan the trees from any sign of movement.

  “Look over here a sec,”

  She turned quickly, perhaps supposing that Clarissa had spotted the white doe. As she did, Clarissa snapped the picture. “There....now I’ll have something to remember you by.”

  Opaline looked affronted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Not entirely sure, Clarissa shrugged. “Well, you’re going home soon...and getting married to a guy who doesn’t believe in cars. I’m never going to see you again...”

  “Abe drives,” Opaline said. The way she turned her head when she looked at Clarissa made her feelings obvious: she thought her friend had lost her mind. “His family is Amish...but he made the choice not to join the church...is that really what this is about?”

  Clarissa shook her head. “No. Yes...I don’t know. I just feel like you’re throwing everything away. For what? Some guy? You’re hauling off to the middle of nowhere...”

  “Which is where I grew up.”

  “Exactly! I thought you came here to get away from all that. Meet new people. Try new things...”

  “Just because my life goals are a little different than yours doesn’t mean they’re any less valid.” Opaline sounded quite offended and Clarissa didn’t like it. No part of her meant to upset her friend; she wanted to understand why a bright energetic girl who had been desperate to be around “real live people”, the same girl who helped drag Clarissa out of her shell, suddenly wanted to go back to the life she left behind.

  “I’m sorry...I just don’t understand.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  Clarissa closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She knew Opaline was right: her life belonged to her, but she still didn’t like it. She would never like it. Of that she was sure. “Can I get a picture of the two of us?” She asked instead of pursuing the line of conversation any further.

  “I’m just getting married. I’m not dying.”

  “Just humor me.”

  Opaline sighed and leaned her head on Clarissa’s shoulder. Clarissa held the Polaroid away from her and snapped the photo. She added the slowly developing film to her dashboard along with the other one.