The Magick of Dark Root (Daughters of Dark Root)

by April Aasheim

  She sighed dreamily, her blue eyes clouding over. “I had a very special wand, my dear. With the power to heal, and some say, grant eternal life.”

  “Whoa!” Ruth Anne burst out, then snapped her mouth shut.

  “Was it destroyed, Grandma?”

  “No dear. It just got…lost. Besides, living forever would be boring, don’t you think?” She smiled, but there was wistfulness in her eyes.

  Her lips trembled and she announced that our lesson was over. We shuffled out of the bedroom like zombies, our minds full of Mother’s words.

  “You don’t really think Mama had a wand like that, do you?” Merry asked as we shut the door behind us.

  “If she did, I’d think she’d of already used it on herself,” I said. “Besides, you know Mother and her stories. Magic like that doesn’t exist, even here.”

  “I suppose,” Merry agreed thoughtfully. When the others passed us in the hall, she said, “I didn’t want to bring this up, as it seemed irrelevant until today, but do you remember when we were kids? How vibrant and healthy she was?”

  “Yes,” I said, recalling the image of my mother, fifty pounds heavier and several decades younger. Her hair was wild and long, still thick as a skein of yarn. Now it was so thin you could practically see through the strands. “She got old, Merry. People get old.”

  “She looks decades older than she should. Most of my friend’s parents don’t seem that old.”

  “She may have started having children later than most people do,” I said. “We still don’t know how old she really is.”

  “Yes. I guess you’re right.” Merry looked at the floor then up again, her eyes twinkling. “But what if she really has a wand like that? Maybe we could…” She stopped herself and her eyes regained their somber expression. “I’m being silly. It’s just that she is so frail. I give her energy every day, but it’s like trying to charge a bad battery. One day she may not charge at all.”

  I touched Merry’s pale cheek. She always had a subtle light around her that illuminated her face. But that light was faded lately.

  “Don’t wear yourself out, okay? It will all be fine. I promise.”

  Merry nodded as we joined the others in the living room.

  “You girls have fun stick-hunting in the woods,” Ruth Anne said. “I think I’m going to watch Jeopardy reruns on my laptop.”

  “You have your knowledge wand. Maybe you should be a contestant?” I teased.

  “Heck, I don’t need a wand for that. Just the old noggin.” She tapped her head. “Besides, I’m not sure this is a maple wand. I went out, asked the first tree I saw for a branch, and gave it a cookie in return.” She grinned at the memory. “…And then I went back for my cookie.”

  “It’s a maple wand, alright,” Merry said, passing us on the way to the kitchen. “And if your smarty-pants wand really worked, you’d know that.”

  June Bug tugged on my shirt. “Grandma wants you again.”

  Sure enough, Mother called out from the staircase. “Magdalene, please come back up.”

  “Told ya,” June Bug said.

  “I’ll save you a spot on the couch,” Ruth Anne said.

  I entered my mother’s bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed, watching as she brushed her long, whisper-white hair in the vanity. I caught her reflection in the mirror, her pale blue eyes, a strip of red splashed across her lips, and small dots of rose blusher on her cheeks, not quite blended in.

  “Magdalene,” she said, swiveling her chair in my direction. “Do you know why I’ve always been so hard on you?”

  “Because I’m not living up to my potential?” I guessed.

  “No!” Her eyes blazed, the blueness swallowed up by the black pupils. She rolled her chair towards me, using her slippered feet to paddle across the room. She spoke, her breath smelling like gumdrops and coffee. “Because you’re a fence sitter, just like your father!”

  She pushed herself back a space, crossing her rail-thin arms as she studied my reaction.

  “I don’t know what that means,” I confessed. “And why does everyone keep comparing me to my father? Merry and Eve are his daughters, too. Are they nothing like him? And what is so awful about Armand, anyway, that we keep using him as an example of what not to be like?”

  It was a lot to ask at once, but the comparison to a man I didn’t know was starting to weigh on me.

  Mother took her cane and rapped me on the knee.

  “Ouch!” I exclaimed. “What was that for?”

  “Armand was a powerful warlock, but he was always…crossing the line.” Her eyes settled on the oil painting of the man, the woman, and the horse. “When I first met him, he showed a lot of promise. You could see the energy around him sparkle, the way that water crackles on a river on a sunny day. He was practically blinding.”

  She half-closed her eyes, lost in her memories.

  I understood what she meant. Michael had that same sort of energy; I noticed it the first time I saw him. I leaned forward to hear more.

  “And charm. Boy, that man had charm. Could get any woman to do anything he wanted. Well,” she added wryly. “Almost any woman.

  “I came across him during one of my travels. He was younger than me, and a wilder, like you. Unable to control his powers. He was quick to anger and when he did, things happened. Machinery stopped or started. Floors rumbled. People clutched their chests, feeling like they’d had heart attacks…”

  “The deathtouch,” I thought, my eyes widening.

  “…He was dangerous out on his own, so I brought him to Dark Root where he could develop his abilities, to work on refining his powers, so to speak. He was one of the first to join The Council, and the only man.”

  Mother tapped her heels to the floor, the cushioning of her slippers thudding softly against the hardwood. “Dora warned me that having a warlock with such power around was dangerous. But if I didn't train him up, someone else would. We couldn’t risk someone darker using his powers for their own gain. There was no other choice.”

  Her heels stopped tapping as she looked at me. “With training, he saw what he was capable of. Healing, growing, helping…in some ways he was the best in The Council. I’ve seen him bring back people that were beyond my realm of help. And he didn’t even have a wand.” She pecked her head an inch forward. “Magdalene, remember this: warlocks do not need wands. They need a witch to syphon power from. And he had a handful of them at his disposal.

  “But it wasn’t enough for him. His ego was strong and he grew restless, wanting something more. Something beyond Dark Root.”

  I felt empathy for my father as I recalled how desperately I, too, had wanted to leave Dark Root, but I kept my face expressionless.

  “During that time,” she continued. “We began to hear the prophecies: Nostradamus, Cayce, and your Aunt Dora. All powerful prophets predicting a cataclysmic end to things. There was a range of years, of course. Over a century, maybe longer if we were lucky. But a century, during the course of history, is but a moment. We abandoned our old lives and worked together to fight back the dark as best we could. If we could delay it, we reasoned, maybe we could change it.”

  Mother shook her head and slumped her shoulders. “But Armand had other plans. He had grown in power, siphoning magic off the women, and wanted to embrace the darkness to come. There was no stopping it, he’d argued, so why not ally with it? And when he insisted that we use our collective powers to…”

  She stopped talking, her voice choking up.

  “Summon demons,” I said. I’d heard that story before. “He wanted to summon demons so that when the time came, they would be on his side, and not against him.”

  Mother inhaled deeply, her thin ribs expanding and collapsing. “Luckily he wasn't able to, at least while he was with us. But we had to make him leave, Magdalene. Him and all his followers, before they poisoned everyone. We cast a spells to keep them out, and others like them who wanted to abuse the magick of Dark Root.”

  “Couldn't h
e just practice elsewhere?”

  “It’s no secret that Juliana purposely chose Dark Root to practice her craft. The earth here is alive with electricity, and a witch’s natural powers are increased here. Surely, you’ve felt it?”

  I had. It was something I didn’t notice in my childhood, as it had always been a part of me, but when I left, I felt my abilities depreciating, and I began to wonder if I had imagined them all along. But now that I was back, I felt the energy move throughout my body.

  “Is this the only place?” I asked.

  “No. There are spots all over the earth––if one knows where to look. And the ancients did, marking them with pillars and pyramids and stone. These regions form a grid across the globe. But Dark Root remained unmarked and only a local legend brought Juliana here. And the longer you are in one of these spots, the stronger you get. Armand spent a lot of time here. If he ever had a chance at summoning, it would be on this land.” She drew in a long breath, her lungs whistling as she exhaled. “I never meant to keep him from you, but we couldn't take that risk. There is a rule in the craft, and that is: never summon that which you cannot be rid of. And a demon is pretty hard thing to be rid of.”

  I swallowed, thinking of Gahabrien buried in the back yard of Harvest Home.

  True, I hadn’t summoned him and he was a lesser demon. Even so, he could cause trouble and he had never been successfully banished.

  With the aid of her cane, Mother stood, her knees popping as she rose.

  “That’s why I’ve been so hard on you,” she said. “You’re so much like your father, always walking the line. And someone who walks the line, I’m sorry to say, is a liability. The one thing you have going for you, however, is that you are not a man.”

  “But I don’t walk the line anymore,” I said, standing to meet her. As a teenager we stood eye to eye, but now I towered over her by nearly a foot. “I’m on your side. Dark Root’s side. Nothing’s going to change that.”

  “Magdalene, you are going to be the target of many people who will want to use your abilities, like their own personal magic wand. And you’re growing in strength, moving from the maiden stage into the mother stage of your cycle.” Her eyes narrowed as they rested on my abdomen. “Only a crone is more powerful than the mother. And there are an abundance of crones who will be threatened by you. Take that as a warning.”

  “I won’t cross any lines. You raised me. I’m not like my…I mean, Armand.”

  “I hope not. But sometimes we do terrible things for the best of reasons.”

  Six

  ENTER SANDMAN

  It wasn’t the scritch-scratching sound of the branches of the great oak tree that clawed their way back and forth across my bedroom window that woke me from my sleep on that cold November morning. Nor was it the steady drizzle of the rain as it pounded on the tightly-packed shingles of our Victorian home. It wasn’t even the suffocating dream I’d been embroiled in, a half-mad montage of dark and light––my father’s face merging with my own, twisting and turning, flipping and whirring, without rhyme nor reason.

  Any of these things could have roused me from my sleep.

  But the real reason I shot up, just before the break of dawn, when not even Aunt Dora prowled the house, was because I had the strangest feeling that I was being watched.

  Pulling the sheet up to my chin, I gazed about my bedroom, scanning its corners and looking for shadows. The spaces where wall met wall were as dark as they needed to be, and not a shade more. I checked under the bed, lifting the bed skirt with utmost care, allowing my face to dip just beneath the frame.

  There was nothing there but piles of dirty clothes.

  Still…

  I couldn’t shake the feeling.

  Tiptoeing to the window, I peeked through the curtains.

  The glass was cold, covered in beads of precipitation that ran down its flimsy pane. Outside, I could make out the rough trunk of the oak tree and the moon, hanging on the horizon like a broken china plate.

  I pulled the curtains fully open, chiding myself for being silly.

  It was then that I noticed it: the large, black shape hunkering on one of the branches. It leaned forward when it saw me and spread its massive wings. The bird screeched, a sound so terrible it should have shattered the glass.

  I fumbled backwards, tripping over a shoe on the floor.

  “Aunt Dora!” I called out in panic. “Paul! Eve!”

  The bird flew to the window, beating his wings and tearing its talons across the glass. It was trying to get in.

  “Someone. Please! Help!”

  “I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” Eve said as Paul scooped up the dead raven with a dustpan and the side of his shoe. “It’s just a bird. We live in the woods, Maggie. You should be used to them by now.”

  “Not this one,” I said shivering. Though I could see my breath in the cold, morning air, I wasn’t shivering because it was cold. “This one wanted to get to me.”

  “Want me to bury it here?” Paul asked, presenting me with the carcass.

  I shook my head.

  If it were up to me, I’d have thrown the thing in the river, but Paul insisted that every living creature needed a proper burial, even the horrible ones.

  “In that cluster of trees,” I said, pointing to a spot near the side yard where I rarely ventured.

  He took the raven and a small spade to the designated site.

  “It was horrible,” I said to Eve, recalling how the bird had beat itself to death on the window. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “You need to get a hold of yourself.” Eve’s eyes followed Paul. “You’re so jittery lately. And with all our other problems, a bird should be the least of your worries.”

  We watched as Paul dug the grave and buried the creature. When he returned he said, “Maggie’s fear isn’t irrational. It’s part of the collective unconscious.”

  “The what?” Eve and I asked together.

  “An information system passed down from generation to generation, almost like instinct. In many cultures ravens symbolize impending doom or even death.

  Eve puckered her lips. “That doesn’t bode well for us. Dark Root’s full of the damned things.”

  “Ravens are also considered tricksters, masters of deceit and illusion.” Paul’s cobalt eyes flashed and he raised a finger. “Some say they are keepers of secrets, and not all of them good. So, in a word, Maggie should be worried, if she were the type to look for signs…which I think she is.”

  “Or,” Eve said, handing Paul a small bottle of Purel from her purse. “He was a stupid bird who ate a bad worm.”

  “I don’t know what to think,” I said. “The last few days I’ve been seeing them everywhere. This one was just more aggressive. Maybe Paul is right.”

  “Ravens don’t fly south for the winter,” Eve pointed out. “Of course you’re going to see them. I see them, too.”

  I pressed my palms together, wishing I could make Eve understand, but there was no getting through to her unless she experienced something for herself.

  “How do you know so much about ravens?” I asked Paul as he escorted us inside. “You a closet bird watcher?”

  “Nope. Just always had a fascination with Poe after I saw a few old movies with Vincent Price.”

  “Poe? What’s Poe?” Eve asked.

  “Only the greatest horror writer, ever,” he answered as he handed Eve her cashmere gloves.

  They were heading to work and I was tempted to ride along so that I wouldn’t have to be here alone. Aunt Dora was visiting Miss Rosa in the nursing home and I had no idea when she’d return.

  “We weren’t allowed to read Poe,” I said, smiling at the irony. “Mother thought he was too scary.”

  “Well, you missed out. He was the Stephen King of his day.”

  “And he wrote about ravens? Sounds kind of dull, if you ask me.” Eve brushed through her hair with her gloved fingers then checked her reflection in the living room mirror.r />
  Paul nodded. “Listen to this…

  “And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

  On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

  And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming,

  And the lamp light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

  And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

  Shall be lifted-nevermore!”

  He stopped his recitation and looked at his girlfriend, waiting for her to be as overcome by the poetry as he was.

  “That doesn’t sound spooky at all,” she said.

  “What? Are you kidding me? Maybe you didn’t understand. The raven says Nevermore.” When Eve still didn’t respond he said, “It’s scarier when you hear the whole thing.”

  “Is it long?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then I don’t need to hear it.”

  “I’m not sure I can love a woman who doesn’t appreciate Edgar Allen Poe.” Paul opened the front door and escorted her out. “That could be a deal breaker.”

  “I have other talents,” she cooed.

  “Yes. Lucky for you.”

  I suppressed a gag as I shut the door behind them. At least with Eve around, I didn’t feel like the stupidest person in Dark Root. Unlike Ruth Anne and Merry, neither Eve nor myself had excelled in school. But at least Eve was comfortable with it. I grew increasingly uneasy at discovering all the things I didn’t know.

  I settled into Aunt Dora’s recliner and flipped on the TV.

  This house was as familiar and comfortable to me as my own house, maybe more so. This was the place where The Council conducted their meetings while we played hide and seek or made forts in the attic.

  I noticed an open envelope on the end table beside me.

  In dark red letters was the word Urgent.

  I withdrew the letter. It was from tax office. The house was going up for sale, it said, unless past due property taxes of $13,589.00 were paid by the end of January.