by B. J. Smash
My throat had stopped burning so badly after I drank the tea. It still hurt to breathe, but I didn’t want to open the paper sack in front of them.
“Thank you, Izadora,” I said. I put them inside my purple robe. The robe swallowed the package up, and you couldn’t see any bulge. This of course did not escape their attention.
“Nice! You’ve got one of those robes! I want one someday,” Ivy said.
My eyes flew to Izadora’s blue robe hanging on a hook by the fridge. I knew hiding in there was Aggie’s book of spells, and it called to me. I bit my bottom lip and forced myself to focus on Ivy and Izadora, but my quick glance at her robe did not go unnoticed. Izadora smirked, but she didn’t say anything. Instead she answered Ivy.
“It is a secret that spell. Few of us know it. I assume Cora gave you that robe?” Izadora said.
I nodded my head.
“Magella does not know of that spell. At least, I don’t think she does.” Izadora began to stir the contents of the mixing bowl again. “Do not let her know. She’ll take it from you.” She then turned to Ivy. “When you learn how to rake leaves without the use of a rake and put them in bags, I will teach you that spell.”
My sister frowned. “I’m no good with magic. I turned a poor little bird into a frog, and now I can’t get it back to bird form.”
Izadora thought this to be quite amusing and laughed. “Keep trying. That’s all I can tell you. Keep trying.” Izadora went about greasing a cake pan. “What you lack is confidence.” She then looked to me. “Ask Zinnia for help. She knows all about confidence. Maybe she can teach you a thing or two.”
At first I thought she was making fun of me. It’s true, I used to be confident. I held my head down low so she couldn’t see my eyes. Out of nowhere, Izadora said, “Oh, don’t worry. It’s still in there.”
I looked up. What was she talking about? “My confidence?” I asked.
“That’s what I said.” She poured the cake batter into the pan. “Now let’s bake the cake.”
She popped it in the oven and gave the oven door four knocks. She opened the oven door and pulled the cake out. She poked a toothpick inside the middle of the cake. Steam escaped. The cake was done.
“I like to make things, but I lack the patience for them to bake,” she said.
I smiled to myself. Now that was magic.
Chapter Four
We set up several folding chairs in a clearing in the wood line next to Izadora’s. Ivy stood by some trees, her shoulders slouching in disappointment. She held Izadora’s grimoire open in one hand and a small stick wand in the other.
“I’m going to try and get it right this time,” she said.
We were still picking up uncooked spaghetti from the ground from her first attempt. We’d never get it all. She had meant to cast fairy lights up in the trees, and somehow about ten pounds of uncooked spaghetti fell from the sky.
I sat in one of the foldout chairs, blowing up balloons with a helium cylinder. When she recited the spell again, I covered my head with my hands. This time she pointed the wand and zapped the tree. A clown suit appeared on one of the limbs.
“Okay,” I said. It was clearly time to intervene. “Tell me, what did you think about when you first cast the spell?”
“I was…” She paused. “I was thinking about how we used to eat spaghetti every Wednesday evening when we lived in New Hampshire.”
“And the second time?” I could already see a pattern forming.
“I was thinking of my tenth birthday party and how I blew out the candles, only to find out that Father had put trick candles on the cake. And then—” She stopped.
“And then what?”
“That led to me thinking about my eleventh birthday, when Father hired a clown.”
At least it wasn’t candles this time that fell from the sky, and only a clown suit that appeared.
I stood and held out my hand. “Here, let me give it a try.”
I half expected her to decline, afraid that I should have anything to do with magic. To my surprise, she handed me the open book and stick wand. So simple was the wand that a person might think its value was nothing of much importance. Not me. I could feel the current flowing inside. The immense power.
“Where did you get this wand?” I asked, although I knew it had to be from Izadora.
“Izadora gave it to me. It comes from her mother’s rowan tree,” she said. “I had lost it in the ocean on the way to the land of the elven. I thought it was gone for good. Funny thing is, when we returned to Merribay, it was laying on Izadora’s kitchen table.”
“So, it made its way back to you all on its own?” I asked.
“It did,” she said.
“Okay, so that tells me that this is quite a powerful little stick you have here,” I said. Clearly, she was afraid to use it. Maybe not afraid, but she was uncertain of its power. It was time that I explained a few things to her.
“This wand is powerful, yes. But it cannot do anything without you to direct its power.” I held it up in a ray of sunshine that peeked down through the branches. Even though the air was a bit chilled with an early fall, the sun felt nice on my face.
“While this wand holds power, it is only a vessel. Most of the power comes from you. You are the source, directing your energies through this wand to do your bidding.” I watched her to see if she grasped what I said. My sister is not stupid by any means; in fact, she is brilliant. But she always had a problem with taking charge of things, and I knew she didn’t want to learn magic because she was not sure about it.
“Okie doke. That’s nice,” she said.
I looked down at the opened pages. They were handwritten in horrible script, but I could still read it. The book was good sized, but in hand it barely weighed an ounce, like I was holding air. I flipped it over to observe the cover. It was a deep green leather adorned with one moon-shaped black stone. Obsidian, I suppose. Obsidian held protective qualities and Izadora must, of course, know this.
I didn’t mean to flip the pages, but a breeze swept by and it just happened. I quickly took advantage of these rare few seconds of holding this book, to take a peek at these pages. It wasn’t my fault, really; I just loved magic so much that my brain took in everything it saw. And it wasn’t my brain’s fault. I had an eidetic memory—or something like an eidetic memory. All I had to do was look at the page and blink my eyes once. Just like snapping a picture, my brain took it all in. I didn’t even have to know what I was looking at. I could call it up later and read it. To me, it could sometimes be a curse. Who wants to remember everything they see?
It was because of my eidetic memory that Izadora and Magella had given me the forgetting tea. They knew.
Hardly anyone knew except my immediate family, but Izadora had somehow found out. I preferred to keep it to myself. I had once heard my grandfather say to nobody in general, “Don’t let anyone know how smart you are. Let them think they are smarter.”
That was the rule I lived my life by. People always underestimated me.
Nonchalantly, I scanned about four pages. It made me feel guilty and I stopped. Although what I had just seen was already stored in my brain, I pushed it aside and locked it away.
I looked up at Ivy, and if she noticed, she didn’t say anything. She stepped forward and reached out her cream-colored hands and took the book back.
“It was on page one hundred and fifty-nine.” She found the page and handed it back to me. “Stay put.” She pointed her finger at the pages, commanding them.
Looking down, I skimmed the page. According to the spell, in order to make fairy lights materialize on the tree limbs, you had to picture a ball of light in your mind’s eye. In your mind, this ball of light had to explode into hundreds of shimmering white stars. From there, you had to picture the white lights zipping into the trees, scattering amongst the branches, and forming into the fairy lights.
This was a different sort of spell than I was used to. No words. Just concentration, focus,
and visualization—and of course the use of the vessel, which in this case was the magic wand. I just had to make sure that I didn’t think of spaghetti, candles, or clowns.
I closed my eyes and took in a nice breath of fresh, earthy air. As I pictured the white ball of light, it came to the front of my mind and sat there where the third eye would be—an inch above the eyebrows, in the center of the forehead. The ball glowed and grew bigger and bigger with each breath I took. When it was the size of my fist, I opened my eyes to find that I could still see it, as though in a different dimension. I pointed the wand up toward the trees. I told the ball to burst.
Thousands, not hundreds, of stars exploded from the white ball and flew up into the trees, and continued on to other trees behind the intended area I’d meant to send it. The stars expanded to more and more trees until the entire area and beyond was lit up with shimmering, starry fairy lights. I focused for them to stay and burn bright all night.
The last part of the spell was to say, “So mote it be,” and so I said it and lowered the wand. I couldn’t help the smile that spread over my face at that moment. It was something to see, all these beautiful lights.
“You did it!” Ivy patted my back. This gesture made me wonder if she’d planned this out the whole time, just to give me a chance to practice some magic. “It’s so pretty. And when it gets dark, the whole tree line will be lit up to high heaven,” she concluded.
“It’s nice. You’re right.” I looked at the wand. “This is a good piece. You should definitely take care of it.” I hated to hand it over, believe me. But she held out her hands, and I placed the wand in one and the book in the other.
Something about magic consumed me. The power corrupted me. I always wanted more.
I was addicted to magic. Did they have a group meeting for this sort of thing? Magic Madness Meltdown (MMM)? It would make for a great group name.
We finished blowing up the balloons. There was probably a spell for that too, but Izadora had handed us a helium cylinder, implying that they had to be handled manually. For some reason, she didn’t overuse magic. Was it because she too wanted to refrain from becoming addicted to it?
When we were done, the place looked magical with the brilliant, happy, twinkling sparks of light mixed in with the fall-colored leaves. Orange and white balloons tugged on strings that were tied to the backs of the chairs. Truly grand. It reminded me of a dance the Fae had held in my honor on the day I had bound myself to them. But that was history, and so I pushed the thoughts aside.
My grandfather would be pleased tonight. If only I had a present to give him, things would be perfect. I gave him a present every year on his birthday, sometimes just something simple that he would like. One year, I’d hand-painted a garden gnome. He’d placed it out front by the sprinklers. Another time, I’d bought him a simple pocket watch at the pawnshop. It hadn’t cost much, and he probably knew it, but he always had it on him. This year, I’d have nothing.
Ivy, who had been talking to herself and trying to adjust a planter full of fall-themed flowers by the guest of honor’s chair, walked over to me. As if she read my thoughts, she said, “Hey, Zinnia! I know what we can give Granddad.”
“What?” I asked, thinking it was going to be an idea I didn’t like.
“How about we have Izadora take a picture of us together. We can make a frame out of wood from the forest, and decorate it with enchanted flowers that never die.” She winked her pretty emerald eye at me.
It sounded like something we would have done when we were kids, but to our grandfather, we would always be young pups. So I said, “Great idea.”
Chapter Five
The party decorations were set up and the logs tossed into the bonfire pit that we’d quickly assembled and ringed with rocks. The only thing we needed now was the people. We had already made our frame. Ivy had disappeared to some magical garden of Izadora’s somewhere up in the trees, and she returned with some pretty flowers. We had attached them to the wooden frame.
Izadora had just taken a picture of me and Ivy standing in front of a bunch of lush green herbs on her deck. I had just asked if she had a computer and printer so that we could print the picture. Oh, how stupid a question that was.
“Computer?” Izadora scrunched her face up. “You think I need a computer? Ha!”
“Well, how will we get the picture? You can’t use a darkroom. I mean, it’s not film, it’s digital,” I said, thinking I knew it all.
She smirked. “This isn’t even a real camera.”
Ivy raised her brows and snickered. “Nope. Not a real camera.”
Izadora walked into what must be her bedroom and returned with an artists easel covered with a black cloth. She set the easel on the tabletop and checked the legs to ensure that it would stand on its own. Before she had a chance to reveal what was underneath, Ivy said, “Make three copies.”
Izadora paused and scowled at her.
“Please, Izadora,” Ivy said.
“Sakes alive! A woman can’t even fulfill one favor, before she’s asked for more.” She rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll get three copies.”
She went about humming a catchy tune, even swaying her shoulders to the melody. Then she sang a few words below her breath in a high-pitched old lady kind of way, and lifted the black cloth from the easel to reveal a blue-colored screen that resembled water. It looked like something from the future, something I’d picture seeing in a sci-fi movie. The screen had yellowish-green symbols that did not touch the screen itself. They just sort of floated before it.
She poked a few of the symbols and moved her hand toward the screen, and without slowing, she shoved her hand inside. It made a smacking sound as it was sucked in. I quickly looked behind the screen to see if her hand had gone through. Of course it hadn’t. I leaned around to the front just in time to see her pull out the first picture. A five-by-seven picture of me and my sister, taken only minutes before, was pulled from the screen. Then she reached her hand back into the weird substance and pulled out two more four by sixes.
“Interesting,” I said.
“Ah, it’s old timey—old-fashioned witch stuff, if you ask me.” She frowned. “Better than a computer though. Here you go.” She handed Ivy the pictures and covered the board with the black cloth and returned it to her room. I took a glance at the “camera” she’d left on the table. To me, it looked like an everyday digital camera. Sort of small, but still.
“Old timey, you say?” I shook my head. “Magella would be so jealous if she saw this.”
Izadora gave me an uppity look. “Yes, she would.”
“Thanks, Izadora,” Ivy said, and then fastened the picture into the frame.
It turned out to be a nice snapshot of us. Flawless. We looked happy to be in one another’s company. Something that hadn’t happened in a long time. And I’m glad I liked the picture because Ivy held out one of the smaller copies and told me to take it.
“You can fold it. When you unfold it later, it won’t have any creases in it,” she said. I did as she told me to and folded it, putting it away on the inside of my robe.
Izadora came out of her room carrying a roll of wrapping paper. “Here you go. It’s got butterflies on it, but he always did like butterflies as a boy. So, it doesn’t matter.”
We wrapped the picture up and left it on the table. Now it was time to get the people, and as we prepared to leave the tree house, Izadora told Ivy to walk me to Ian’s gate and then return. I saw no problem with this, but my sister’s eyebrows bent in.
At the gate, she walked me up the gnarly, overgrown path, and at the rowan tree, she pointed me in the direction of Ian’s house and told me to make haste. When I asked why, she only said, “Just so we can get this party started. That’s all.” She said it innocently enough that I almost believed her.
The sun had started to fall below the horizon as she watched me walk off. There was a slight breeze, and that was the only thing I could hear. It created a little whooshing sound that ruffled
the leaves overhead. I turned once to see Ivy still standing there, watching after me. Her sweet face smiled, and she waved. Finally, I was out of sight. You would think that I was a little kid walking alone in the park, by the way she was acting. I wish she’d get over whatever it was, already. My sister had always been afraid of the dark, not me.
I walked along the path of cherry trees and was guided by the light of the occasional lamppost. Ahead I could hear water flowing down from some sort of fountain. As I approached, I heard humming. A gentle, sweet humming. Like the humming a mother would use to make her child fall into a nice, deep, and peaceful sleep. I almost wanted to hum along.
Walking on, I realized the humming had switched positions. It was now behind me.
I shrugged it off and kept going. Ian probably had a gardener. For years, that had been Gran’s job, and she never complained about any creepers. I walked on, humming a tune of my own. I didn’t scare easily. I think I was missing those genes. They had all gone to Ivy.
Out of nowhere, footsteps could be heard. Not to the front of me and not to the back of me, but right beside me. The glow from the next lamppost could be seen, and I sped up a little bit. From the corner of my eye, I could see a shadowy figure. What was this thing walking next to me?
Just as “we” hit the outer edges of the light from the lamppost, the thing disappeared from my side and reappeared about ten feet in front of me. A woman. With short, curly brown hair and a short yellow sundress.
I stopped and watched. It was too cold out for a dress like that.
She stared me down. Her eyes were intense, like that of a crazy lady, and blazing with madness. The thing that struck me as weird was I could see the lamppost through her body. My body shivered at this discovery. This woman was a spirit of some kind.
I took in a deep breath and let it out. One side of her face went up into an evil sort of grin, and she began to laugh in a crazy, maniacal sort of way. Then she stopped and watched. I bet she’d heard stories about me. I knew one thing was for certain: she did not like me.
