More Than Magic (Books of the Kindling)

by Donna June Cooper

  “Grace!” He scrabbled forward on the rock looking for the edge with his hands.

  “Grace.”

  It wasn’t an echo.

  He spun around and blinked. A dimly lit woman stood on the edge of the pit, strands of silky red hair floating upward in a breeze he couldn’t feel. She pointed behind him.

  “Grace.”

  Through the dark opening in the wall behind him he saw the carvings. He looked back to find the woman had stepped closer.

  “Burden.”

  He swallowed and stepped back. Dammit, she looked a little like Grace, but she wasn’t. She wore a long, old-fashioned dress. “Who are you? Where’s Grace?”

  “Grace.”

  She pointed again through the opening to the carvings.

  He turned and found himself standing right in front of the carvings again without taking a step. Spinning back, he saw the woman with red hair sitting on a rock against the wall. But she wasn’t wearing a long dress and there was a headlamp shining on her head.

  “Are you real?” she murmured, as if in a trance.

  “Grace?”

  “Nick?” she stood up.

  He ran to her and hugged her, then pulled the headlamp off her head so he could see her face clearly.

  “What—what just happened?” she asked. “Where’s Annie?”

  “You—” He blew out a breath. “I thought you fell with her.”

  Grace looked aghast. “She fell?”

  “You turned off your headlamp and I didn’t see—”

  Grace shook her head. “I didn’t. I was sitting on the—” she looked around and swallowed, “—edge of the stairs. And then I was sitting here.” She looked behind her at the rock against the wall. “I thought— It was like one of my dreams.”

  Nick swept the room with the light from the headlamp. Pops’s twisted walking stick leaned against the wall next to their daypack. The shotgun, his handgun, and his sat phone lay on the ground beside it.

  But the only passage that remained was the one that led back to the meth lab. The opening to the staircase was gone.

  Grace was shivering.

  Nick set the headlamp on the floor beside them, and grasped her hands in his.

  “Are you all right?”

  Those deep green eyes met his and, for a moment, he swore he saw the handprint from the wall reflected in them.

  “Old Annie,” she said. “She sat right beside me. She didn’t see me sitting there. She was talking to Granny Lily.” Her fingers were cold.

  “She— What?” Nick said.

  “I saw my Granny Lily,” she went on. “I was sitting there watching Annie talk to my Granny Lily, who was standing…on nothing.”

  Nick squeezed her hands. He had seen her too. He just hadn’t realized the woman had been floating in the air, and the light she’d switched off hadn’t been from any headlamp.

  “Annie said she’d just let Pops fall and then she slid off,” Grace went on. “And the light went out. She thought it was me.”

  Nick pulled her into his arms and held her, thinking about the woman who had looked so much like Grace.

  “She didn’t even know she had a gift. The way she pushed those boys around, got them to do what she wanted,” Grace sighed. “She was looking for something she already had.”

  “I have a feeling your old magic just does what it does, Grace. We probably couldn’t stop it if we tried.”

  She took a shuddering breath. “Pops used to say something like that.”

  “He was right. It’s something…unimaginable,” he said. “And very powerful.”

  “I just never imagined it could—would cause harm.” Her voice was hoarse, as if she hadn’t used it in a long while.

  “Just the opposite, in my experience.” He interrupted her and laid his hand over the hole in his vest meaningfully. “I think Old Annie sealed her fate long before she climbed down into this cave. Maybe…maybe what comes to you is based on what’s already inside you. You want to heal, and Annie…”

  “…wanted to control,” Grace finished. Her fingers extended reverently to touch the back of his hand. The cool brush of her fingertips sent an unexpected flash of heat straight to his core.

  “If you weren’t here, I would think this was some mad dream,” she said. “And none of that really happened.” She looked behind her at the bare wall where the exit to the stairs should be.

  He could imagine the panic of her thoughts. “Next thing you know there’ll be a bottle with ‘Drink Me’ written on it and a white rabbit will hop past,” he said.

  She blinked a couple of times, then color seeped back into those pale, freckled cheeks. Her fingers lifted from his hand to touch his face. “I would have said fairies rather than a white rabbit, but you’re not the fairy type.”

  Nick put his fingers over hers. “Not dreaming,” he said, smiling at her.

  “Sorry. I—” she looked around. “But we were going to check on Jamie. Do you think she made it before the snow hit?”

  “You know a snowstorm would not stop our Jamie,” Nick said.

  She smiled. “True. And it seems we have to go back to where they are most likely to find us.”

  “Mmmm,” he agreed and reached for the headlamp, trying not to think of the carvings waiting behind him in the dark. As he picked it up, the light illuminated something on the wall behind Grace. Something familiar.

  “Those journals you are searching through. The ones with the old handwriting and the pictures of plants. What’s that all about?”

  “The journals?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re Granny Lily’s. I found them in a trunk in her office. The back of the lab.”

  “You seemed to be searching for something in them, while you were waiting for me to wake up.”

  She looked around as if for an escape. “I—Nothing.”

  Nick raised his eyebrow and gave her his best skeptical look.

  She bit her lip, and took a deep breath. “All right. I’m looking for data, theories, analysis—” she said, “—reasons. She had to have had the same questions I do.”

  He tried not to smile. “But probably not quite in the same language,” he said. “She wasn’t a scientist.”

  “Actually she was. In her time. And she had to have the same questions—the same doubts about this—this gift.” Grace still had trouble finding the words to describe her doubts. “And in her time, I know she had to be concerned about being discovered.”

  “Being—What?”

  “Nick, think about what happened to her. I’d rather avoid the equivalent of being burned alive in this day and age.”

  “The equivalent of— What is it you think would happen to you?” he asked.

  “If anyone finds out what I can do? Well, let’s see. Everything I love could be trampled by desperate people trying to save those they love. Or my life could be turned upside down to prove I’m a fraud because I violate their perception of reality or their beliefs. Or, our altruistic government will lock me away somewhere for my own safety and proceed to use me ‘for the good of all mankind’, whatever that may mean.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “And no matter what happens, I think I will go slowly insane because I can’t help everyone who needs help and I can’t choose.”

  Evidently, she had thought about it—a lot.

  Nick cupped his hands on either side of her face. “Is that what happened to her, your Granny Lily?”

  Grace took a deep breath. “What do you mean?”

  “She lived a very long life right here on this mountain, right?”

  “Yes, but she was horribly burned because of what she could do. And—”

  “And?” Nick prompted, remembering what Annie had said about Lily.

  “She hid. She hid her gift, and herself. She never used the gift again, as far as I can tell. She never set foot off this mountain. She became a recluse to avoid people. I suppose to avoid being tempted to use it. And she wasn’t able to have any other children
beyond Jeb, who was born before the accident.” Grace took a deep breath. “Woodruff Mountain might be the most magnificent place in the world and I know that Grandpa Zach made sure she had the very best of everything, but that wasn’t a life.”

  “I see,” Nick said calmly. “So the journals aren’t helping—”

  “They say nothing about her gift. And I’m a scientist. I need something. It’s only Granny Witch wisdom: herbal remedies, botanical information, traditions and sayings, stories. I skimmed through them all while you were asleep. It’s wonderful, marvelous stuff actually, but she ignored that part of her life.”

  “Or hid it.” Nick pointed the headlamp directly at the bottom of the wall behind her.

  Grace followed the light. Just above the rock where she had been sitting was a painting of a plant with red berries, made to look as if it grew out of the rock.

  “I saw that exact painting in the journal you were reading when I woke up,” Nick said. “And I saw a picture in your lab that said that’s ginseng, right?”

  “Yes! I knew that watercolor was odd. The front of the page had only the leaves and berries. The notation said that ‘the most vital part of the ginseng, as with all great treasure, is buried below the surface’. Then, on the next page, she painted the root, the valuable part of the ginseng plant. There was room to do the entire plant on one page, but she split it in two.” Grace looked up, her face shining. “Of course she would hide it in the most secure place on the mountain. Under the ginseng.”

  Nick peered up at the ceiling.

  “Obviously it’s not the ginseng that keeps people away and gets them lost on the mountain. The cave’s protecting itself. The ginseng just happens to have grown on top of it.”

  Nick knelt in front of the rock and ran his hands around the edges, thinking about what really might have lured Old Annie into that crevice. “But maybe all those ancient stories about ginseng had their root in your ginseng.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t think our ginseng bed is that ancient,” Grace said. “Then again…”

  He looked up at her. “I think this rock will slide out if we can lever it loose.”

  Grace searched her pockets and pulled out her multi-tool. “It’s probably too small.”

  “We’ll see,” Nick said, taking the tool and pulling out the knife.

  He worked the knife back and forth between the wall and the rock, removing dust from the crevice until he noticed an indentation.

  “Wait a sec. There are—” he slid his fingers down in one spot then another, finding indentations on both sides, “—handles?” He pulled and there was a grind of rock against rock.

  Grace managed to get her fingers behind the rock and pulled as well. It slid forward, with a great deal of complaint, until the rock was more than a foot away from the wall.

  On the wall where the rock had rested, below the painting of the ginseng plant, there was a nearly perfect painting of the man-shaped root.

  Nick heard Grace’s gasp and looked into the space where the rock had been. It was empty. He felt her eyes on him as he pulled off his glove, leaned over, and reached down. “There’s an opening in the wall behind it.” And there was something in that hole: wrapped in oilcloth, tied with leather straps, and covered in dust. He carefully levered it out and up to rest on the rock.

  Grace tried to untie the straps, but they had been tied a long time and Nick had to use the tool to work the knot loose. Finally, with a deep breath, she removed the oilcloth.

  There were two objects. The larger one was wrapped in a small quilt. The smaller was obviously a book, wrapped in yellowing tissue. Another journal. Nick smiled as she clutched the book to her while he removed the other larger object from the quilt and tilted it so that she could see.

  It was a framed photograph. A very old black and white photograph, matted and mounted under glass, but showing hardly any signs of age or discoloration. A man in nineteenth century garb stood proudly behind a chair where a lovely woman sat with a youngster standing at her side.

  “Granny Lily,” Grace whispered.

  Nick looked closer. It was the woman he had seen out on the steps.

  Grace was stunned. It was almost identical to the oil portrait hanging along with the other family pictures in the great room at the house.

  “That’s Grandpa Zach and that’s Jeb.” She pointed. “It’s—it’s the exact same setting as a painting of them we have at the house. The same clothes. This had to have been done at the same time as the portrait.”

  Except in this photo, Lily’s face and her left side were turned toward the photographer and she was smiling, whole and beautiful, unscarred. Her left hand, without a glove, rested on Jeb’s shoulder, undamaged. And in Granny Lily’s handwriting on the mat of the photograph was written 1889, New York City.

  Grace’s head was whirling. “She’s not scarred.”

  “This was after the fire?” Nick asked.

  “Yes. We always wondered where the portrait was done. We thought the artist had come up here and for some reason used a stock background and painted them into it,” Grace said. “She went to New York.”

  “Apparently they all did. Doesn’t look like she’s hiding on the mountain to me.”

  “No. But the painting has Lily hiding the left side of her face, and wearing gloves. All the miniatures and paintings of her picture her covering up that side—the side that was burned in the fire. This photograph shows her without any scars at all. And she’s smiling. She’s happy. She always looked so solemn in the other pictures,” Grace said. “She’s happy. She’s smiling. And I’m an idiot.”

  Nick sank down across from her. “Why do you think that?”

  “She healed herself. That was why she had to hide!”

  “You never healed yourself?”

  Grace smiled at him. “Not like this. I always thought it was—”

  “Coincidence. Good luck. Serendipity,” Nick recited.

  “Good genes,” she added. “But this is amazing. She was completely healed and she couldn’t let anyone see this photograph in her lifetime, or perhaps even in Jeb’s lifetime, any more than she could let them see her.”

  “But Old Annie’s grandfather saw her. He knew she had healed herself.”

  “Yes, and everyone thought he was crazy,” Grace said.

  “She left this so you would know,” Nick said.

  Grace’s eyes went wide and he watched as she reached out to touch the photo’s frame, studying the face of her great-great-great-grandmother. “Not me specifically,” she said. “Someone. The future.”

  Nick pushed the rock back into place and swept the area to hide the skid marks.

  “Coincidence then,” he said.

  She looked at him and smiled. “Coincidence,” she agreed.

  Grace returned to the book in her hands, turning a few pages reverently. It was Granny Lily’s careful handwriting, but there didn’t seem to be any drawings or paintings. She hugged the book to her and slid it into her backpack.

  As Nick started to rewrap the photograph in the quilt, she put out her hand to touch the fabric.

  “It’s a baby quilt,” she said softly, tracing the pink and green pattern. “For a girl.”

  “Grace?”

  “There haven’t been any girls in the family for generations.”

  “None?” Nick looked down at her.

  “I’m the first,” she said. “The first in more than a century.” And Granny Witches pass down their most precious secrets only to trusted female relatives.

  Nick helped her rewrap the photo and truss it up again in the oilcloth, tying it so that he could carry it for her.

  “So, back to our little cave,” Nick said. He had already retrieved everything, and handed Pops’s walking stick to her. Grace took it in her hand and looked back at the blank wall where the opening to the great staircase had once been.

  “Your Pops wouldn’t bring me here.”

  She knew those steps would disappear now. If that entrance ever
led to this room again, it would be some other way. But she wondered if she could ever use it again.

  Nick pulled the flashlight out of the daypack. He smiled at her and switched it on, motioning her toward the dark passage that was their only way out.

  Grace tried to think of something besides Old Annie’s last moments. “Perhaps on the way back you can tell me what really brought you to my mountain, Mr. Cro—”

  Damn.

  Nick squeezed her hand. “It’s McKenzie,” he said. “And you aren’t the only one with a gift.”

  Surely she had heard him wrong. He smiled down at her and she relaxed.

  “Oh, it’s not in league with yours at all, but since I was a kid, I’ve had this thing, this kind of intuition. One of my friends from the agency called it my scum radar. My sister called it my third eye, but I think she did that as a way of freaking me out when I was a kid. I kept waiting for eyelashes or eyebrows to sprout in the middle of my forehead. Seriously. The girl was just plain mean.”

  Grace snorted. She used to torment Daniel in about the same way about his uncanny dreams. His gift.

  “You both go missing in the storm, without a trace.”

  She looked up at Nick, who was watching her with concern, and pushed away the thought. They were going to get out of here.

  Nick went on. “My brother—” Pain flickered across his face as he said it. “He called it my ‘sixth sense’. He never made fun of it, though. He told me to hone it and trust it and use it.”

  “Alex,” Grace said. She was relieved that his family was real—he hadn’t made them up. But that meant Alex’s death was real as well.

  “Yeah. Alex,” Nick responded. “It wasn’t real strong at first. I had to kind of learn to—I guess the word is ‘listen’ to it. But over the years, I learned how far I could push it before people became suspicious or incredulous. I used to clean up with my friends doing guessing games. Picking cards, what you have in your pocket, crap like that. I wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot.” He shrugged. “I was a kid. What did I know? Lucky we didn’t live near any casinos or who knows what I would’ve ended up trying to do.” He grinned at her. “I think because I practiced it when I was a kid, I figured out how to tap into it better, and how to disguise what I was doing.”