by Tess Lake
The violin faded away and Meredith began the service: “Dearly beloved…”
Much like Hilda and Arlan’s wedding, the part of it that made the marriage was quite short. In deference perhaps to the traditional, non-witchy side of the gathering, the wedding vows were the standard ones: in sickness and in health, and so on. The sun went down and the forest was lit up by lanterns casting a warm glow over everyone. Although the guests could not know it, there were also certain witchy spells in effect making sure any insects kept their distance. I couldn’t tell exactly, but I think possibly Aunt Cass had cast some spell on the weather as well. I could feel something giant and powerful moving at a distance. I’m sure if I glanced down into Harlot Bay and found it was raining, it would not be raining up here on the hill with us.
Aunt Ro and Sheriff Hardy kissed and then there was an explosion of light high above us as fireworks shot up into the air, hidden out in the tree line. The crowd gasped and clapped and then the music struck up. Aunt Ro and Sheriff Hardy were laughing as they embraced Aunt Cass, Sheriff Hardy wagging his finger at her and then giving her an enormous kiss on the cheek.
There were huge tables of food off to the side that somehow amongst all the crazy wedding preparations the moms had made. Some people went for that, but most joined in the dancing, the wild sound of the violin taking hold of us. I grabbed Jack, kissed him and then danced on the grass, feeling surrounded by the warmth and love of family and friends, and the wild nature of the forest.
The night spun on in a blur. Too much wine, too much dancing, too much food, too much laughter. But as is the case with these things there can never be too much in moments like this. It was one of those moments where you became acutely aware of the passing of time, of the transitory nature of all things, that all of us dancing and laughing in the forest would one day be replaced by an entirely new group of people doing the same. We had to make our happiness, but we had to take it and hold onto it for the moment.
Eventually the night wound down, guests and friends kissing and hugging and waving goodbye. I walked down the hill holding Jack’s hand, giddy from too much wine, my head and spirit spinning from too much dancing, too much happiness. Somewhere far behind, Sheriff Hardy and Aunt Ro followed, coming down to fall into the back seat of Harlot Bay’s one and only limousine that would then take them to a hotel in town where they were staying in a honeymoon suite.
I stumbled inside, heading for the warmth of my bed, pulling Jack along with me. I did not care one bit for the sorrows of the world at that moment. The night was perfect. But alas, like all things, such perfection was transitory. Many of Harlot Bay’s police force had been at the wedding, but a few had been obliged to stay behind and they’d already been out on a call: a woman’s body found dumped in the forest.
Olivia Knapp, the girl in love with Henry G, poisoned and abandoned to die.
Chapter 18
“The show must go on! The show must go on!” Hans roared, his face red, apoplectic with rage.
“Someone died. You need to shut the show down,” Sheriff Hardy repeated through gritted teeth.
“Art is the only defense against death,” Hans yelled in Sheriff Hardy’s face.
“If you yell at me again I’m going to arrest you,” Sheriff Hardy said, his face beginning to turn red.
“For what? Fighting against death with art the only way I know how?” Hans proclaimed, looking as though he was saying lines that he would put in his next autobiography.
“No, it’s for being an ass,” Sheriff Hardy said.
I was standing by the stage with Peta on one side and Marcus Fyfe on the other. It was the day after Sheriff Hardy’s wedding and the news had spread across town that a woman had been found dead in the forest. Tonight was opening night and we were meant to gather for one last run through before we opened in the evening. But everything was ruined, a disaster. Olivia was gone, dead, found foaming at the mouth. It was easy to see she’d been poisoned by whoever had poisoned Hans. Again, a venomous snake was suspected given the snake that had been let loose in the theater, which had eventually been confirmed as an Australian tiger snake.
Now the police were trying to put together Olivia’s last movements to find out where she had been last night.
Given her death, Sheriff Hardy wanted to shut the play down, but Hans was fighting him, realizing ultimately the Sheriff didn’t have the power to stop the play going ahead.
I looked away from Hans who was still red-faced but managed to lower his voice as he was talking with Sheriff Hardy. I could feel my stomach churning, a kind of sick hollow feeling that no amount of food could get rid of. I’d already talked with Jack and he had wanted me to stop as well, said that he’d pull the fire alarm himself if that’s what it took to shut the play down. Part of me agreed with him. It was clear that whomever poisoned Hans was doing their best to stop the play. Their attempted murder had now become actual murder. But the other half of me shared the sentiment the teenagers and everyone else in the play did: the show must go on. Everyone had worked so hard under such horrible conditions struggling, rehearsing over and over for hours, even in the face of danger and sabotage. They didn’t want to stop, for it all to have been for nothing. Even though I wasn’t going on stage, I felt the same way. Perhaps if we could just get through our opening night, increase the number of guards looming around the place, things would be okay. Jack had grudgingly accepted my position, although honestly I wasn’t too sure of it myself.
As Sheriff Hardy and Hans continued to talk and everyone stood around mute and shocked, I noticed there was something stuck to my shoe. I knelt down and peeled it off. It was a perfectly arched eyebrow, probably lost at some stage during the play. It was sticky with spirit gum on the back of it. I squished it in half and then stuffed it in my pocket so I could throw it away later.
“Did you see Henry G? Does he know yet?” I asked Marcus in an undertone.
“I have no idea if he knows,” Marcus whispered back.
“Aren’t you guys all staying at the same house?”
“Nope, it’s in his contract, he has his own place,” Marcus said and then quickly quieted when Hans shot a glare in our direction.
Quite a while ago, Hollywood movie people had come to town to shoot a film. Having more money than sense they’d rented empty houses all over Harlot Bay with virtually one person from the production to a house. Hans’s theater company didn’t have as much money so it had rented entire houses, the big ones that had lots of rooms and then the lighting assistants and various people working on the production got a room to themselves. I just assumed that Henry G was staying at the same place as Marcus Fyfe and some of the other men.
Sheriff Hardy finally departed. His men had spent the morning searching the entire theater from top to bottom, looking for anything dangerous, any sign of sabotage, but hadn’t found anything. As soon as they were gone, Hans roared out again: “Back to rehearsal, from the top, start again,” he yelled.
Despite the terror of the day we all moved, operating like a well-oiled machine. The former director Emilion had taught as well, but now he was gone, replaced by Hans. We didn’t even see him to say goodbye. We’d just arrived for rehearsal and there was Hans, looking fit and well for a man who’d been poisoned and touched the very face of death.
The play began and soon Aunt Cass was up in the role of the drunken Tinker, Christopher Sly. She was half way through a line when Hans shouted out “Stop! That’s terrible, do it again.”
Aunt Cass, to her credit, did the line again but again he yelled out to stop.
“That’s the worst acting I have ever seen. Do it again!” She repeated the line and again he shouted, again and again. Five times we went through the loop of Aunt Cass saying the same line. Out of everything that could have scared me it was the look on Aunt Cass’s face that was the worst. After he had shouted for the fifth time, she stomped her foot on the stage and I swear in the distance I heard thunder rumbling.
“Give me some d
irection then. Don’t just say do it again. What you want me to do?” Aunt Cass said. Her voice was dark and cold and if Hans had known what she really was he would have been quaking in his boots.
Hans stood up from his chair and walked closer to the stage. “What I want you to do is audition for my next play. We’re going to be putting on Macbeth and I think there’s a role for you. Here’s the line that you can practice: ‘Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble.’ It’ll be perfect for an old witch like you!” Hans shouted.
The look on Aunt Cass’s face would have killed a lesser man. I cringed, feeling sure that there’d be a flash of light and then just a grease stain on the ground where Hans had stood. I knew he’d just been insulting her as he’d been insulting everyone all morning but the witch comment hit far too close to home.
Aunt Cass frowned at him and then gave him a gentle smile before adjusting her clothing and delivering the line again.
Hans didn’t shout out this time but rather glared at her and then walked back to his chair to continue watching the play. It felt like there had been a battle of wills, but because she hadn’t fought him she had possibly won somehow.
We sped through the play, Hans occasionally bursting into a rage, the teenagers scampering about, the feeling of fear and terror but somehow out of that came incredible performances. The words came alive. Kira was Katherine the shrew; Amaris was Bianca, her sister; Anton was their father decreeing that the younger can only wed when the elder one did.
There were betrayals and mistakes, people pretending to be others, dressing up. The play flowed through the auction and then to the final scene where Kira delivered her speech about obeying one’s husband.
The doors of the theater were closed, but outside I could still faintly hear the protesters chanting. It seemed an appropriate backdrop to that final speech which was probably the most controversial of the entire play, the one which people argued over the most. Was Katherine, the tame shrew, now truly tamed by her husband and the obedient wife? Or was she giving the speech, presenting one face in public, but being different in private, knowing that to advance her husband’s power was to advance their own?
Whatever the answer, Kira gave a masterful performance of it.
We finished up the play. Hans merely grunted “Good” and then walked off to his dressing room.
We cleaned up and reset for tonight, and then Aunt Cass found me.
“I have a lead on where the salamander is. Come on, we need to go,” she said.
Chapter 19
“I’m impressed you didn’t turn Hans into a grease spot,” I said to Aunt Cass as we drove back to the mansion.
“I think that man is going to get what’s coming to him,” she said cryptically.
“You think someone is going to murder him, don’t you?”
Aunt Cass looked out the window out over Harlot Bay as we drove up the hill.
“No, I don’t think so but I believe he’s going to be ruined. That’s what my intuition tells me.”
“Is that why you smiled when he was shouting at you?”
“Oh that? No, I just had a sudden idea about where the salamander might be. We’ll grab the climbing gear and go behind the mansion,” she said.
Aunt Cass refused to elaborate on exactly where we were going so eventually I gave up and drove until we got home. She ducked inside, grabbed the climbing gear which she forced me to carry, and then I followed her up around behind the mansion, into the forest. There is plenty of land up behind the mansion. Lots of space with the cottages and things other witches had built and abandoned. On one side it slopes down, eventually joining farmland, and on the other it is a cliff with some very rickety old wooden stairs and others carved into the rock.
We stopped near a small opening in the ground, which I knew led down into some caves. When we were children we had been warned never to go into them, and considering they were scary and dark we had eagerly obeyed that instruction. Aunt Cass put her climbing harness on and then helped me buckle mine up.
“Is this going to be safe?” I asked, really not wanting to go down into the dark and scary cave.
“You’re with me, of course it’s not safe,” Aunt Cass said with a devilish grin. She tied the climbing rope around a thick tree and then connected an electric winch to the line, which she then connected to us.
“If we get stuck we just hit the button, it’ll pull us right back up,” she said.
“Okay, I guess,” I said.
Aunt Cass went first, edging down into the hole, letting out rope as she went. I followed behind her partially because, well, if my eightyish-year-old great aunt could do it then I should be able to as well. As soon as we were underground we both cast floating lights to illuminate the area around us. It was wet and damp but didn’t smell unpleasant, like the stormwater drains. It just smelt of dirt and stone. We climbed down a ledge and then Aunt Cass used the winch to lower us down another ten feet or so until we found another level of the cave. It opened into a small area where there was black moss growing. Below us was another hole that descended into inky darkness.
“Do you feel that?” Aunt Cass whispered.
I closed my eyes and tried to relax, which was extremely hard, considering the circumstances. The magic this far down was still, like a pond that had been untouched. But yes, there it was, some warm edge, something that shouldn’t be there. It was radiating out from somewhere below us.
“What is that? Is that the salamander?”
“I don’t think it is, but I believe that it’s part of the puzzle,” Aunt Cass said.
We let our lights float down below us and Aunt Cass hit the winch to lower us down gently. We descended into the dark and quiet, the only sounds the winch, our breathing, and distant dripping water.
The air temperature dropped as we descended. The light only illuminated a small space around us but I could feel that we had lowered into a much larger area, the cave expanding into the distance. We brightened the floating lights but even then they could not illuminate the entire cave system which stretched off into the distance.
“Oh goddess we’re so far up,” I whispered, trying not to look down at the drop.
“Or we’re so far down would be another way to look at it,” Aunt Cass said and then laughed.
Eventually, we reached the ground and Aunt Cass unhooked us. There was no natural light in any direction, just black, the only illumination the glowing orbs that we had summoned. Now that we were here, I could feel whatever it was, the radiating force. Aunt Cass pointed in a direction and I nodded. We began clambering over rocks, watching out for small pools of water, hearing dripping and also in the distance the sound of a gently burbling stream. As we moved, the sensation of something radiating at us became stronger. I couldn’t help but think of Jack, him appearing in my mind, and Aunt Ro’s wedding. I imagined it was him standing by the altar, me wearing the green wedding dress, walking up and clasping his hand. Then we’d kiss and be married and dance away under the stars.
“Do you think Art is a good man?” Aunt Cass asked me in a distant voice.
“I think he might be. He seems to like you,” I said. Aunt Cass obviously had her man on her mind as well.
We continued moving, clambering around a large boulder and then there in front of us was a pool, glimmering with pink sparkles of light. It was the source of the stream that we could hear burbling, running its way out of the cavern.
Aunt Cass pushed her light over above the pool and there, standing above it, were the wreckage of broken barrels, bright pink liquid dripping out of them into the basin below.
“The earthquake from the explosion must’ve done it. Shattered the barrels and set the love potion free,” Aunt Cass said.
I made my way around the pool, careful not come too close. The barrels looked old and there had to be at least twenty of them. Maybe only four or five had broken.
“These are stamped with The Merchant Arms. That was the place Juliet Stern owned,
” I said.
“The girl must have been making a lot of love potion,” Aunt Cass said.
“There must be a hundred gallons here. What if this floods the town?”
“A whole lotta love is what.”
“Are you taking this seriously?”
Aunt Cass turned to me and gave me a sharp look.
“Would you prefer the unvarnished truth? If it floods out, people will die. There will be murders and violence. Love is not to be messed with - it is the most dangerous of all emotions. A person will kill in hatred but love? They’ll burn the world.”
“Okay, sorry! No need to get too melodramatic about it.”
“Or perhaps you’d like me to talk about all the relationships currently running only because they had a little boost from the love potion in the water? We take this away and there is an almighty hangover coming. People are going to wake up in beds next to people they definitely don’t love. Many will wish they could take back their… engagements.”
“Are you talking about Will and Luce? No, he loves her! It was ages ago he messaged her about ring sizes.”
“These barrels were broken when I fought that monster out on Truer Island. That’s all I know.”
“Seems like you’re saying it’s not true love.”
“Who can know such things?” Aunt Cass said and turned away from me.
The cave was cold and I shivered. I had a sudden image of Jack bringing me cookies. Was that him or the love potion?
“Come over here and help me counter what has leaked out,” Aunt Cass said.
I obeyed, my mind on other matters.
“We’ll just do the potion that has leaked. I’ll figure out what to do with the rest of the barrels later. Once it’s gone we should have a better chance of finding that salamander.”
We held hands and I followed Aunt Cass’s lead.
The magic to counter is simple - flow of magic and a word.
As usual, I was soothed by the magic. The warmth of it, the patterns in the flow. We gathered it up and then let it out, directing it into the pool. There was an initial resistance, like pushing at a heavy box that didn’t want to move. But after a moment, the counter broke through. The pool changed from sparkly pink to muddy brown. The color crept up the side of the bank and into the broken barrels, destroying the last of the escaped potion.
