The Magick of Dark Root (Daughters of Dark Root)

by April Aasheim

  “Don’t hate the messenger.”

  “Stop it, you two,” Merry said, lifting her face. “There’s more.”

  “More?”

  “Yes. After I fed her and changed her sheet––we’ve been going through a couple of sheets a day now––I tucked Mama in. As I was about to leave she pointed to something behind me. ‘Robbie,’ she said with a huge smile on her face.”

  Merry leaned forward. Her eyes were wide. “There was an energy in the room, I swear it. I felt a presence behind me. I turned, and, and…”

  “You saw him?”

  “Yes. He was there, as clear and as solid as the two of you. And he was so young. Twenty-two, tops. He wore an army uniform, but not the kind they wear today. Old-fashioned ballooned pants that tucked into his boots and a wide-brimmed hat with a chin strap.”

  Ruth Anne pulled out her notepad and drew a picture of a man in the outfit Merry described. It was a crude but effective rendering. “Did the uniform look like this?”

  “That’s it. Like something in an old movie.”

  “That’s no Vietnam or Korean War getup,” Ruth Anne said. “That looks much older.”

  “What are you suggesting?” I demanded.

  Ruth Anne tapped buttons on her smartphone. “Look at these,” she said. She slid her finger across the phone, revealing one old photo after another. Stone-faced boys in uniforms and chin-strapped hats stared back at us.

  The captions read: Soldiers of The First Great War.

  “World War One?” I asked, my jaw going slack. Mother said he’d died in a war, but it couldn’t have been that war. “That would mean Mother’s much older than we thought.”

  “Much, much older,” Ruth Anne agreed.

  “When I saw this man, actually more like a boy, standing there in Mama’s room, I tried to shield her from him. All I could think of was that he was a stranger trying to hurt her.”

  “Or hurt you,” I said.

  “I never thought about that.” She shook her head. “I told the man to leave. All the while Mama kept saying ‘Robbie, Robbie’ and she was reaching her hand out to him and he was reaching his hand out to hers, right through me, like I wasn't even there. Feeling his hand inside me was such a shock, I think I might have screamed. As their fingers were about to touch, a woman appeared.”

  “Larinda?”

  “Yes. She was standing behind the man, smiling, but Mama didn’t notice. All she cared about was reaching Robbie. I grabbed Mama’s hand before he could touch her. That’s when I lost my balance and fell, hitting my head on her nightstand.” She pointed to her black eye.

  “…It all happened so fast. When I looked again, Robbie and Larinda were gone and Mama was sleeping. When I checked on her she said she loved me and thanked me for taking care of her. Then she went back to sleep. Not another word about Robbie or Larinda. It was as if it never happened.”

  “Freaky,” Ruth Anne said. “If Miss Sasha really did have an end of life experience, that doesn't explain why Larinda was there. In most every documented case, it’s only friends and family who have already passed.” Ruth Anne pulled at the tufts of her brown hair, scrunching her eyes in concentration.

  “It’s all just one of Larinda’s illusions,” I said. “She wanted to spook you.”

  “Well, it worked.”

  I looked at the crystal bracelet on my wrist: Mother’s Circle. If I hadn’t taken it from her at the hospital, the dome wouldn’t have slipped and Larinda never would have gotten inside Dark Root.

  “It’s not your fault,” Merry said, sensing my distress. “The Circle was meant to be yours. Now we need to fix what’s been broken.”

  “I know.” I filled my lungs with air then pushed it out. “We have to keep our wits until then.”

  Merry dabbed the washcloth to her eye again. “I was caught off guard. I’ll try not to freak out if I have another encounter.”

  “You’re exhausted, that’s why.”

  “I’ll try and be a bit more help,” Ruth Anne said, taking the last cookie from the tray. “Then maybe Larinda will come to me. I’d love to have a chat with her.”

  “Good luck with that. She only comes when she isn’t wanted.”

  I heard Leo laughing in the next room, a series of grunts and snorts.

  I turned to Merry. “Ruth Anne probably told you already, but I’m taking Leo home tomorrow. That will be one less worry, anyway.”

  Merry nodded. “Yes. She told me about your visit from the cop this morning. June Bug and I are really going to miss Leo.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You did all you could,” she said. “And maybe he’s a better person now than he used to be?”

  “Maybe I am, too.”

  I spent the evening saying goodbye to Leo. Though he’d been with me less than a month, I couldn’t imagine life without him.

  “Now Leo, remember not to talk too much, at least at first,” I instructed him, folding up his shirts and packing them into his duffel bag. He had what he had come with and a few extra items I had purchased for him with the cash he had in his wallet: a pair of jeans, two new shirts, a package of socks and a package of underwear.

  “You might miss me,” I said, folding his pants and tucking them into his bag. “But I’ll be thinking about you. Got that?”

  “Can-dee,” he whined, staring out the window.

  “Oh, will you quit whining about candy? This is important, Leo! You are…you are leaving.” The last word caught in my throat.

  He lowered his head. I felt bad for scolding him.

  “Want a Pixie Stick?”

  He nodded, holding out his hand for the treat.

  Before I packed his wallet I looked at his driver’s license. “I didn’t know your middle name was Geoffrey.” There was so much I didn’t know about him. So much I’d never know.

  “Where we going?” he asked, placing his candy-coated hands in his lap.

  I regarded him curiously. He had spoken a nearly full sentence, one that required thought and perception. “We are going to see your mother. Do you remember your mother?”

  He blinked twice but didn’t respond.

  “I’m sure she’s really nice. And she will take good care of you.”

  He took my hand and held it, interlocking our fingers. “Magg-ee my mother.”

  I yanked my hand away. “No, Leo! No! Maggie’s not your mother”

  I tossed his duffel bag into the hall while he stared at me. “Stop looking at me,” I ordered. “Help me pack. Find the rest of your things.”

  But he didn't move. He continued to sit in silence, watching as I removed every trace of him from my bedroom.

  How much did he really understand? I wondered. Perhaps there was a whole world going on inside of him he wasn’t able to articulate. Or maybe he was starting to remember his old life.

  Panic slammed me in the chest.

  If he was starting to remember…

  “Leo, do you remember when we found you?” I asked, hurrying back to the bed. “Do you remember that night?”

  He nodded, fiddling with his thumbs.

  “What do you remember?”

  “Dark. Scary. Dirty.” He pedaled his feet up and down on the hardwood floor, shaking his hands by his side.

  “Anything else?” I asked, biting my lip.

  “Worms.”

  “Worms?” Oh, God. Poor Leo. Alone and scared in the dark, fighting his way through dirt and worms to come back. And it was my fault.

  I wanted to tell him not to worry because I would take care of him. But it was his real mother’s job now.

  “It’s bedtime,” I said. “Want me to tuck you in?”

  “Uh-huh.” He crawled under the covers. I shut off the light and pulled the blanket over, kissing his cheek. He smelled like crayons and baby powder.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, stroking his hair. “For everything.”

  He was asleep before I spoke the words.

  “Have sweet dreams,” I said, waving my
hands over him, casting a spell of peace upon him as his slumber deepened.

  The next morning Eve printed me out a map. “His mother lives just outside of Linsburg. Easy drive. It will take you less than thirty minutes to get there.”

  I folded it in two, and put it in my purse.

  “So you’re not taking any of his money?” she asked, as she poured herself another cup of black coffee. Unlike me, her exhaustion didn’t show on her face, only in her mannerisms––the way she tapped her foot on the ground, paced around the room, and slurped down one cup of coffee after another.

  “No. I’m not taking any of the money.”

  “Not even a little?”

  I hesitated. It was tempting. There was so much we could do with it. But it wasn’t ours. “Not even a little. We’ve already screwed with karma enough, don’t you think?”

  “You keeping the car, at least?”

  “I don’t know. I shouldn’t.”

  “If you had a car, you could visit him. It’s not like he’s going to be driving for a while.”

  “Poor Leo,” I said, watching him color in one of June Bug’s books at the far end of the table. “He probably isn’t going to be doing much of anything for a while.” The guilt returned and my chest tightened. “Do you think it’s fair dumping him on his mother like this?”

  “She’s the one looking for him. Besides, when you’re a parent, you’re a parent for life.”

  For life.

  I wondered how anyone could do it. The anxiety, the frustrations. It was hard enough taking care of myself, without constantly worrying about someone else.

  Leo held up his artwork, a smile extending across his simple face. He had worked hard to stay in the lines and to use every color in the box. “For Maggie,” he said, sliding the picture across the table to me.

  My heart fluttered as I took it.

  “Thank you, Leo. I’ll treasure it, always.”

  I was beginning to understand.

  His real mother deserved to have him back. This was her son and she’d love him no matter what.

  “Leo, it’s time. Ready to go home?” I came up behind him, squeezing his shoulders. They felt small and knobby. Despite my efforts, he had lost more weight.

  He looked around the dining room. “Leo home.”

  “Yeah,” I said, swallowing hard. “This will always be Leo’s home, too.”

  Leo’s mother lived in a district dubbed “Shrub Town” by the locals, a string of ramshackle houses settled willy-nilly around a large hole that may have once held water. I’d visited there with my own mother once, when I was a kid. We had gone to cure a woman who suffered from a particularly bad broken heart.

  The woman had been a wreck, greeting us in a half-open robe that revealed one sagging breast as she uttered incoherent noises that only Mother seemed to understand. Her house was equally awful, with dishes swimming in stagnant sink water, a floor so covered in grime I couldn’t make out its original color, and piles of dirty clothes strewn over the sofa.

  I had stayed outside most of that visit, peeking in the windows from time to time as Mother counseled the woman. After an hour, Mother was out, leaving the woman with an amber locket in the shape of a heart, an incantation to read beneath the light of a new moon, and instructions to burn her philandering husband’s picture in the flames of a purple candle.

  “What happens when she casts the spell?” I had asked Mother on our drive home.

  “He disappears.”

  “Disappears? Where to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I looked into my lap, fiddling with the friendship bracelet Merry had made for me.

  “Don’t worry, Magdalene. She won’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “As much as people want to get over a broken heart, they still cling to love. Even hopeless love. If she casts the spell, she gives up any chance that her husband will come back. It takes a particularly cold heart to put on the locket and recite the incantation. In all my years, I’m not sure anyone has ever done it.”

  “Why would a person want love from someone who doesn’t love them back?” I asked. “I don’t get it.”

  “That’s one of the great mysteries of life,” Mother answered, staring out her window as if it were the abyss the offending husband disappeared into. “But it keeps me in business.”

  “Maggie,” Leo tapped my on my thigh, jolting me from my memory. “Music?”

  “Sure.”

  He turned on the radio, blasting Living La Vida Loca. He danced in short, jerky motions as he tried to sing along, pulling some of the lyrics from his memory and forgetting others.

  I wondered if he would ever fully recover, if he had enough time. Had he suffered temporary brain damage in the accident or a complete flushing of the mind and soul? It was as if someone had tried to put a puzzle together by jamming the pieces together, getting only a few in just the right spots.

  “Want a cheese stick?” I asked.

  “Candy.”

  “Eat the cheese, first. It will make you big and strong.”

  Leo proudly showed me his muscles, unaware that much of his mass had been lost and his arms hung like bat wings. I smiled sadly and turned away.

  “And some fruit,” I added, handing him a baggie full of apple slices. He frowned and pushed it back. “I cut those myself and you’re gonna eat them. Got it?”

  “Got it,” he said, taking the bag and forcing an apple into his mouth. “Yucky.”

  “You’ll thank me for it later.”

  But there would be no later. Once I dropped Leo off, I knew I might never see him again. The thought left me profoundly sad. I adjusted the rear view mirror and gunned it.

  “Three miles till our exit,” I said, feigning cheerfulness.

  Leo munched on his apple but didn’t look at me.

  We had reached the end of our road together and Leo was alive enough to realize it.

  Twenty-Five

  WHO WILL SAVE YOUR SOUL

  The house was small––a squat building with one door and three windows. The lawn was dirt with a few weeds shooting up near the walkway. The neighboring houses that had sprouted up around it were larger and newer, encroaching on it like they were waiting to gobble it up.

  But the small house held, an unpleasant reminder of the shadows of the past.

  When Leo saw the house, he shook. I had to drag him out of the car.

  “No, Magg-ee, no,” he said, digging his heels into the ground as I pulled him along.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” I assured him, even as a prickly sensation crept down my spine.

  I knocked and the curtains in the front window fluttered. After a moment of seeming deliberation, the front door opened.

  “Mrs. Winston?” I asked, peering at the small, wrinkled face with squinting eyes that hovered in the crack of the door. “I’m Maggie and I’m with your son.”

  I stepped aside, revealing Leo. The door opened wider, the room beyond it devoid of light.

  “My son! Where have you been?”

  We sat in Mrs. Winston’s living room, an area with one loveseat and a TV. Aside from the single, mosaic crucifix that hung on the wall, there was no color to the room. I tried not to stare at the cockroach that burrowed itself in the crack of a floorboard.

  “I’ll make you some tea,” Mrs. Winston said. Her tone was formal but not friendly.

  Leo sat next to me, pressing his shoulder into mine.

  “Scoot over,” I said when his mother left the room. If she saw us like this, she might assume we were lovers.

  “I’ve missed you, Leonard.” She returned with two cups and a package of saltines. She sat the tray down on a crate that served as a coffee table. “I’d offer you more but this is all I have, right now. I was saving the tea for a special occasion.”

  “This is fine,” I said, forcing myself to nibble on one of the crackers. “You have a lovely home.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” she said, still standing. “I know
this place is not lovely. All the beauty of this place disappeared when Leo’s father left.” She smoothed her sparse gray hair into place and straightened her equally-gray skirt. Then she turned her attention to Leo.

  “When you didn’t send a check this month, I got worried. That’s not like you. Figured something must have happened.” Her eyes flittered to me. “He doesn’t call. Never has. But at least he always sends me grocery money. Let’s me know he cares and that he’s still alive. Two hundred and twenty dollars a month. That’s more than his father ever sent.”

  “Mrs. Winston…” I began.

  “That’s Miss Winston,” she said, extending a left hand without a ring.

  “Miss Winston…”

  “I thought maybe Leo had left me for some floozy, too.” she interrupted. “The men in this family never could take care of their responsibilities. It’s like the good book says: the sins of the father are passed down to the son.”

  I was caught off guard by her statement but continued on. “Yes, well, you see, Leo has had an accident.”

  “An accident?” Her hand went to her chest. “What kind of accident?”

  “He hit his head on a rock just outside of Dark Root.”

  “You’re from Dark Root?” Her eyes narrowed and she leaned forward to get a better look at me. “The witch town?”

  “Um, yes.” I glanced around the room, feeling the walls closing in on me.

  “And how did he hit his head?” she asked, a strange new look in her eyes. I’d seen that look from strangers’ eyes a few times in my life—and it frightened me.

  I rubbed my hands together. “Uh, he got back from Seattle last night. When he came for his car, we went for a walk before supper. He slipped near a river. I helped him back and he spent the night in our guest room. He woke up still not feeling great, so I drove him here.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Your mother was Miss Sasha, correct?”

  “Yes. Is, actually.”

  She blinked slowly, her lips puckered in contemplation. “Well, it’s lucky for my son that you were there to help him. I guess I owe you a thank you.”