The Magick of Dark Root (Daughters of Dark Root)

by April Aasheim

  “Yes,” Ruth Anne said, turning her head up towards the sky. “Let’s hurry. A storm is coming.”

  The storm had come, as Ruth Anne predicted.

  Five minutes outside of Dark Root, on the road to Linsburg, we were caught in it. Heavy rains slashed at the windshield and tore at the tires. It pelted the hood of the car like bullets in a war zone, making it near-impossible to see, even with the wipers going full speed.

  “Maybe we should pull over?” I asked.

  But Ruth Anne was on a mission, both hands gripping the steering wheel as she pushed on the gas, using only memory to guide us towards the highway.

  “Or at least slow down,” I added, buckling my seat belt and pulling it taut across my chest.

  The road narrowed––a small stint of loneliness flanked by thin trees and deep ravines.

  “This doesn’t look familiar,” I said, rolling down the window to try to see through the rain.

  Ruth Anne shot me a sideways look but kept driving.

  “Times like this, I miss Florida,” she said, taking off her glasses to clean them.

  “Want me to drive?”

  “No.”

  Ruth Anne was headstrong and stubborn, a trait we shared, passed down from our mother. But while my stubbornness was usually the result of not wanting to do something, Ruth Anne’s stemmed from her need to complete a task, no matter the consequences.

  I remembered her bragging to Aunt Dora as a kid that she could read Gone With The Wind in four days, and she stayed up late nights and missed meals to accomplish the undertaking. Ninety-six hours later, she emerged from her bedroom victorious and raccoon-eyed, waving the novel triumphantly in the air. Aunt Dora quizzed her and Ruth Anne answered every question correctly.

  She might be a junk food eating cynic now, but she still had the same willfulness and fortitude she’d always had.

  I took short, deep breaths, trying to calm myself. With every pothole in the road she hit, I laid my hands across my belly protectively.

  Maybe the child didn’t need to worry about my deathtouch. Maybe he’d need to worry about his Aunt Ruth Anne’s driving, instead.

  “Music?” I asked, hoping the steady beat of something besides the rain would take my mind off the situation.

  Ruth Anne popped in a CD, sending Metallica blasting through the car. As the chorus kicked in––enter night, exit light––she tightened her grip on the wheel, narrowed her eyes, and pressed the gas pedal down to the floorboard, plowing through the rain and fog.

  I shut my eyes, one hand still on my belly and the other on the pendant around my neck.

  After several minutes she flicked my knee and said, “You can open your eyes now, chicken.”

  Sure enough, the road had opened up and the fog had lifted. Even the rain had lessened here.

  “Easy peasy.” She grinned.

  “Yeah, for crazy people.”

  “I come by it naturally.” She paused, licking her lips. “If memory serves me, you were a bit reckless in your youth too. Motherhood is changing you, Mags.”

  “Someone’s gotta keep the family name going.”

  Worry swelled up inside me, as it always did when I thought about the tremendous responsibility I was taking on. If I couldn’t keep a plant alive, how in the hell did I expect to keep a kid alive?

  “You’ll do great,” Ruth Anne said, sensing my distress. “It’s like having a pet. You feed it. You change its litter box when it stinks. Easy Peasy.”

  I scrunched up my lips. “I’ve never had a pet. Not even a Chia Pet.”

  “Well, then,” Ruth Anne slapped her right hand on the wheel. “The poor thing is screwed.” She looked at me, punching my right arm when she saw I wasn’t laughing. “Don’t take life so seriously. Things will be fine. I mean, with an auntie like me, what could go wrong?”

  “Indeed.”

  “You know,” she said, staring out at the road before us. “We probably could have gotten the turkey from Dark Root Grocery. I doubt Merry would have known it wasn’t organic, especially if we took off the wrapper and put it in a pan in the fridge.”

  “Oh, she’d know, all right. She can smell preservatives a mile away. And if she didn’t figure it out, June Bug would have.”

  “June Bug’s a neat kid, isn’t she?” Ruth Anne said, her eyes softening.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “You ever think of having kids?”

  “Me? I’m afraid that ship has sailed, my dear.” I was about to ask her what she meant, when she changed the subject. “Speaking of having kids, you talk to Shane yet?”

  “No.” I admitted. “Why?”

  “Because I need to know how this shit resolves itself for my book.”

  “I thought you wrote romances. My life is as far from a romance as the sinking of the Titanic.”

  “Bad analogy. Titanic was a great romance.”

  “I disagree. It was doomed. The movie made it seem romantic, but for Rose it was heartbreak followed by years of living alone afterwards. Not to mention hypothermia.”

  “And people think I’m a cynic.” Ruth Anne scratched her head. “The reason Titanic was so romantic was because it was a perfect love that could never be. No reality to screw it up. And, Jack and Rose got to be together in the afterlife. That’s pretty cool.”

  “Maybe that will be me, then.” I stared out the window. “Hurray for the afterlife.”

  “I write paranormal romances. The afterlife plays heavily in those kinds of stories.”

  “Goody.” I lowered my eyes, a knot forming in my chest. “At least don’t use my name in your book, okay?”

  Ruth Anne gave me a sideways smile. “That, I promise you.”

  “Watch out!” I yelled, pointing at a deer darting across the road.

  Ruth Anne wrenched the wheel hard to the right. We narrowly missed the deer, but our car slipped off the side of the road, losing traction as it rolled down a muddy slope.

  I pressed my back to the seat, clutching the belt across my chest as the sedan slid into the forest, gliding along the wet earth beneath its tires.

  “Brakes!” I ordered.

  “I’m trying!” Ruth Anne wrestled with the steering wheel, trying to navigate the vehicle as it slipped further down the embankment. A rushing river came into view and Ruth Anne frantically punched the brakes.

  I fingered the crystal bracelet on my wrist. “Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop,” I repeated.

  Ruth Anne pushed herself back against her seat. “Hold on! We’re going in!”

  “Stop!” I commanded the car.

  At once, we came to a sudden and abrupt halt, just feet from the river. With sweat-drenched faces we stared at one another, then whooped and high-fived in relief.

  Ruth Anne got out of the car as I wrestled with my own stuck door. “Now, that’s a near-death experience!” She threw her head back and howled. “What a rush!”

  “When I was talking about happiness in the afterlife, I didn’t mean now.”

  “No time like the present.”

  “Where are we?” I asked, still fighting to open my door, which was blocked by a heavy branch.

  Ruth Anne pulled out her phone. “I have no idea,” she said, shaking it. “GPS isn’t working.” She tapped several buttons and held it to her ear. “Phone either.”

  “Of course not.”

  “We’re stuck in about two feet of mud. Got a spell to fix that?”

  “I think I’m out of magick for the day.” I shivered, wrapping my arms around my chest.

  Ruth Anne popped the trunk and handed me a small blanket that Merry must have kept for picnics or emergencies.

  “Gotta give it to Merry for always being prepared,” she called from the back of the car. “There’s a box of organic granola bars in here, two flashlights, several gallons of water, another blanket, and some flares. There’s even a neck pillow and some romance novels. We won’t die out here, at least tonight.”

  Ruth Anne tossed me one of the romance novels. A han
dsome young cowboy on the cover kissed the neck of a pretty, young blond. I threw it back at her, remembering my encounter with Shane and the young woman in his apartment

  “We can send up the flares,” I suggested.

  “Negative. Too many trees. We’d have to get to the main road, or a clearing.”

  I looked up the embankment. It was steep, muddy, and littered with branches and fallen trees. It would be a feat to climb, but I could do it.

  “Let’s go,” I said, finally getting my door open.

  “Hold on there, Jill. I won’t be responsible for my pregnant sister tumbling down a mountain. You stay with the car. I’ll find a place where my cell phone works or I can send up the flares. One way or another, we are getting out of here.”

  “Why are you more qualified than me?” I asked, crossing my arms.

  “I lived in the Everglades for three years. Plenty of alligators, swamps, and moonshine. I think I’ll be okay.”

  “Well, I lived with a group of people who were always preparing for the end times. I think I know how to take care of myself.”

  “Point taken. And if we end up having to live out here, I will let you take the lead. But right now, I’m walking.”

  Ruth Anne took the flares, two granola bars and a flashlight, and stuffed them into her pockets. “Stay in the car, okay? And don’t run the engine unless you have to. We need to save the battery.” She grabbed several large branches and piled them in front of the tires. “That should brace the car, in case it starts to slide again. I hope.”

  I swallowed, imagining me sleeping in the car as it slipped quietly into the river. After being dunked by an invisible hand in the bathtub, I wasn’t keen on being submerged.

  Maybe I’d add more branches after she left, just to be safe.

  “Good luck,” I said, suddenly worried. I ran to give her a hug.

  “Quit that, or I’ll tell everyone how mushy you’ve gone.”

  “I think they already know.”

  “If I don’t make it back, tell the old woman I love her.” Ruth Anne winked, and then picked up a long stick. She inspected it and nodded. “Stay put,” she instructed, pointing the stick at the car.

  I nodded obediently and watched my sister disappear into the thick blackness of the ancient woods.

  I checked the time on my phone repeatedly, waiting impatiently inside Merry’s sedan as minutes, then hours, rolled by. It was an old flip-top phone, functional but not fun, and I wished for one like Ruth Anne’s, with games to play to pass the time. With nothing else to do, I decided to entertain myself with a silent game of I Spy: Forest Edition.

  I spy, something slithering in the leaves.

  I spy, something crawling from out from under a rock.

  I spy, something watching me from a tree branch.

  Admittedly, it wasn’t a comforting game, and each new discovery caused my skin to ripple and my legs to draw closer to my chest.

  But it kept me alert. It also lessened the dread that threatened to overtake me as I thought about Ruth Anne out in the forest all alone. I dug into my memories, trying to recall if she’d been the outdoorsy type as a kid. Truth was, though we were all children of the forest, I was probably the only one who ever ventured out into the woods. I took long morning runs, trying to find myself among the trees because I didn’t seem to fit in at our house.

  It should be me out there, lighting flares and looking for help.

  But as Ruth Anne pointed out, I was pregnant––a convenient excuse that I allowed.

  I spy, a big, pregnant coward.

  And then the darkness came.

  Like a slide show presentation, one moment I watched the silver currents of the river rush before me, the next moment it became an oil slide, oozing across the landscape, devouring the light around it.

  “C’mon Ruth Anne,” I said, hopping up and down on my seat. The inside of the vehicle had fogged up and I cracked the window, braving the cold in favor of visibility. With every leaf that crunched or branch that cracked, I jumped, hopeful that Ruth Anne had come back, yet knowing it was not her who created those sounds.

  I had to pee so badly it hurt and I ventured over to a little stump I had spied earlier.

  Huddled in my blanket, I pushed up my skirt and squatted, wondering if Merry also had toilet paper in the trunk of her car? As the stream hit the ground, it rolled down the slope towards the river. It stopped, not quite making its destination. But where the trail stopped, I noticed something sparkle beneath the glint of the rising moon, something I wouldn't have seen in the light of day.

  I took five giant steps forward and hovered over the glimmering object: an old road sign half-buried in the mud. I kicked away the dirt and lifted it with one hand, shining my cell phone light on it with the other.

  It was one of those crazy old signs in the shape of an arrow.

  “What the…?”

  I swiped at the remaining dirt trying to read it, as the night around me grew deathly quiet.

  123 Old Raven Road.

  “Holy hell!”

  I dropped the sign and dashed back to the car, retrieving the spare flashlight. Then I scrambled back to where I had found the old sign.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I shone the beam across the arrow shape. Sure enough, the words matched those written in our backyard and on my bathroom mirror.

  I waved the light across the ground, a small beacon in an ocean of black, looking for…something.

  There it was. A path wide enough for just one person to transverse, carved through the woods.

  I spy an old dirt road.

  I stepped forward, casting my light into the trees. Without the moon it was pitch inside, a blackness that could swallow me whole.

  I knew that I should wait for Ruth Anne to come back. We could investigate together.

  But Ruth Anne might not come back.

  And I had lived with Mother and Michael long enough to understand that there were no coincidences in life.

  In the pit of my stomach, I knew that I had been led here, and it was a path I needed to walk alone.

  I said a quick prayer of protection and cast my flashlight beam forward.

  Fourteen

  LOSING MY RELIGION

  I entered the woods, my flashlight a small consolation in the labyrinth of darkness.

  The trees pulled back, allowing me to inch forward, and then clamped shut behind me, sealing me within. I fought my panic, trying to keep a clear head as I followed the path. I’d been called here for a reason.

  It was a long trail, curving and turning, purposely constructed for confusion. Fear kept me warm, at least, and I dropped the blanket on the ground.

  At last, I came to a small dale. The moon and stars flickered overhead, no longer obscured by the woods, and I could make out an old shack in the middle of the clearing, an abandoned dwelling with a smoke-blackened front wall and boarded up windows. The door was ajar, allowing an orange glow to escape. Three brass numbers, darkened with soot, hung clumsily over the door.

  “123,” I said. I had found my destination.

  “Maggie.”

  Someone whispered behind me. Then a dozen little whispers echoed all around me, like children telling secrets in a schoolyard.

  “Maggie. Maggie. Maggie.”

  The trees behind me had shut. I could only go forward.

  I waved my free hand around me, reciting a spell remembered from childhood.

  In this sphere, I cannot be

  Harmed by witch, or magic being

  As long as I walk in the light

  This bubble keeps me through the night

  For good measure, I rubbed the crystal bracelet on my arm and kissed the pendant that dangled from my neck. Superstitious, I knew. But superstition and magick went hand in hand.

  The door flew open. A fire crackled within.

  “Hello?” I stepped forward, casting my flashlight into the house. The walls and floor were covered in layers of soot and sawdust. A small bed, a
nightstand, a rickety table with two chairs, a heap of blankets, and a faded painting of a sunset comprised the rest of the furnishings. In the center of the room sat a large, black, steaming cauldron, fueled by a fire pit beneath.

  “Hello, Maggie,” said a deep, female voice. The pile of blankets on the floor rose up, taking form.

  “Hello, Larinda,” I answered, watching the blankets transform themselves into the shape of a woman. “We meet again.”

  Larinda threw back the cowl of her cape and laughed. “Really, Maggie? I expected something less cliché from you.”

  I shone my light across her body, starting at her pointy black slippers, up her gray wool dress and black cloak, across her face. She was not beautiful. The lines and angles of her shape were unsoftened by feminine curves: her nose too sharp, her lips too thin and long, her eyes too narrow. But she was a commanding presence, and her dark hair hung in stark contrast to her alabaster skin and blood red lips. She had a handsomeness that suited her age.

  “As you can see,” she said, raising a pointed eyebrow. “I’m no great beauty. Never have been, really. That was all your mother. She was beautiful, charming, strong, and willful. All the men ignored me when she was in the room. As her cousin, I grew up in her shadow. Something you and I have in common, right Maggie?”

  I pressed my lips together but didn’t speak.

  “But we were family, and you don’t turn your back on family. Am I right?” Larinda’s eyes flickered, burning like the embers beneath the cauldron. She softened her eyes, a slight smile touching her lips.

  “It was impressive how you handled my daughter.” She snapped her fingers and Leah appeared on the bed, looking tired and confused. “Cutting off her hair. Brilliant. You see, that’s the sort of thing I expect from the great Maggie Maddock.”

  A witch’s power was directly related to the length of her hair and I had shorn Leah’s, rendering her magically impotent, at least until it grew back.

  Leah turned to me, her face expressionless.

  “But I’m not the fool my daughter is,” Larinda said, stepping so close I could smell her breath, a mixture of soil and soot.