The Magick of Dark Root (Daughters of Dark Root)

by April Aasheim

Leo fidgeted beside me and I hoped he wouldn't jump in and start talking about candy or worms, or any of that.

  “How are you doing, son?” she asked.

  In response, Leo tucked his face into his hands and hid behind my shoulder.

  I nudged him out.

  “He may have a concussion,” I said, as calmly as I could. “My sister’s a nurse and said he should be watched for a day or two.”

  “Maybe I should take him to the doctor, then?”

  “I’d give it a few days,” I said, taking a sip from my cup to hide my nervousness. “I think him being here, with you, is going to heal him right up. Isn’t that right, Leo?”

  He nodded dumbly. I held back a sigh of relief.

  “I have his stuff out in the car. I will bring it in,” I said, setting my cup down on the crate and standing.

  “Thank you. Perhaps you’ll stay for Bible study? Would you like Maggie to stay for Bible study, Leo?”

  He nodded.

  I had no problem with Bible study, but I wanted to be out of this place as soon as possible.

  “Um, I had better not. My mother’s expecting me home. I have to take her shopping.” I opened the door, setting one foot outside. “I’ll be right back with his things.”

  Miss Winston followed me out. As I neared the car, she caught me by the shoulder. “I’m not sure what you did to my Leonard, but that is not my son.”

  “Pardon?” I asked, spinning around and unloosening her grip on me.

  “That thing you brought me is not Leo! Leo would never agree to Bible Study, even with a concussion and even for a pretty girl.”

  My knees shook. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady.

  “I know who you are and what you are. The sins of the father are passed down, as are the sins of the mother. Witches, all of you. You’ve put a spell on him, haven’t you? It’s blasphemous.”

  “I better go,” I said, backing up. “I’ll bring his car around tomorrow when I have a ride.”

  “Yes, you do that. I’ll be calling the police as soon as you’re gone. In the meantime, I’m going to do my best to get the devil out of that boy. He was a worthless heathen before, just like his father, but now he’s an abomination.”

  How dare she? Leo was not an abomination!

  The Circle hummed against my wrist as anger welled up inside me. Miss Winston noticed.

  “Who or what did your family bargain with for their powers?” she asked advancing.

  I reached my hands forward to stop her. My fingers tingled. I remembered…

  The deathtouch.

  My hands still shaking, I sidestepped as she lunged forward, retreating to the Cadillac.

  Leo’s face appeared in the doorway. “Maggie!’

  “C’mon Leo, we’re going!”

  He bolted outside, charging past his mother and into the car.

  “You’re not taking my son!”

  “Stay away!” I yelled.

  The front window of her house cracked, then shattered to the ground.

  She looked at it, then looked at me. “You’ll pay for this. All of this!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, jumping into the car. I spun out of her driveway with the gas pedal pushed all the way to the floor.

  But not before I noticed the amber locket in the shape of a heart hanging from her neck; a locket given to her by my own mother, years ago, to cure her broken heart.

  Twenty-Six

  CHAMPAGNE SUPERNOVA

  “You’re lucky I like you,” I said, driving the speed limit and checking my rear view mirror for cop cars. “Well, do you miss your mother?” I asked as we took our exit and headed into Dark Root.

  “No,” he said. It came out almost out as a sigh.

  I squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry, Leo. I’m sorry you had such a crappy mother. It wasn’t fair to you and it kinda explains some things.”

  “Minties!” Leo squealed as we drove past Dip Stix Café. I ignored him and headed for Sister House.

  “Hurts,” he said, as we bumped along the dirt road.

  “It’s just gravel,” I said. “You’ll be fine.”

  “Leg hurts,” he informed me as we pulled into the driveway. He pulled up the leg of his pants. Another bruise had developed near his ankle.

  “Do they all hurt?” I asked, noticing a small, blue-black mark behind his ear.

  “Yes.”

  I pressed my lips together “Don’t worry. June Bug has lots of Band-Aids.” He took my hand and followed me in. “I think Eve’s been baking,” I said, sniffing the air. It smelled like bananas and vanilla. “Maybe she’ll share.”

  “Yay!” he said, but his voice was weak.

  “I knew I should have gone with you. When did you develop a heart?” Eve turned to me, crossing her arms as if she expected an answer.

  “Women often become more compassionate during pregnancy,” Ruth Anne said. “Especially to things that are in need.”

  “Leo is not a thing!” Merry snapped. “I wish you’d both would stop referring to him like he’s a piece of furniture.”

  “You’re just defending him because he has a crush on you.” Eve rummaged through her purse and produced a pink lip gloss, which she applied perfectly without a mirror. She slammed it back into her bag and sat down.

  “Now what? That cop will be looking for Leo. Here.”

  Merry paced across the living room, fanning her face with her hands. “Eve’s right. We can’t have the police crawling around here. One mistake and I lose June Bug.”

  “Wait till Frank finds out Leo’s a sex offender,” Eve said. “Then things will get really ugly.”

  “He’s not a sex offender,” Merry said, wringing her hands and glancing at June Bug as she raced past. “Not anymore, anyway.”

  Ruth Anne sat back in the dining room chair and stretched her legs. “It might not come to that. If Maggie took him to see his mother, he’s not technically missing anymore.”

  “That’s right,” Merry said, her shoulders softening.

  “I still don’t think it’s a good idea to keep him,” Eve said. “We’ve got our own problems.”

  “Eve, he is our problem!” I said. “He’s like this because of us. And if you could have heard the way she talked about him…she called him an abomination. An abomination! What was I supposed to do? Leave him there with her?”

  “That was the plan. It’s not like he can understand her anyways.”

  “He understands more than you know.”

  “Does he understand why he’s weak and covered in bruises?” Merry asked.

  I had no answer for that question.

  “Maggie, can you come here for a minute? Ruth Anne, you too.” Merry called to us from halfway up the staircase.

  Eve stood ashen-faced behind her. I glanced around the living room. June Bug and Leo were playing Operation on the floor. Mother sat on the sofa, watching them. There were no police cars in the driveway.

  Merry’s eyes widened, beckoning.

  “What now?” I asked.

  We gathered in Mother’s room with the door shut and locked.

  “We found this in Mama’s drawer,” Merry said, handing me a photo.

  It was a picture of a good-looking man, about twenty years old. He was dressed in a uniform, like the one Ruth Anne had pulled up on her phone.

  I turned it over. On the back, in Mother’s script, were the words: Robbie Maddock, April, 1915.

  “Mother’s beau,” I said.

  Merry handed me another photo. “Now, look at this one. It’s the same man, and he’s with Mama.”

  There was no mistaking that the shockingly young woman in the photo was our mother. She knelt on a blanket, her long, wavy-brown hair cascading down over her shoulders, framing her round face. Beside her, with his knees tucked into his chest, was the same young man from the previous photo. He wore civilian clothes: a white shirt, gray slacks, polished shoes, a floppy hat, and suspenders. She smiled into the camera while
he smiled at her.

  Behind them I could make out a river. And a willow tree.

  “The Lightning Willow!” I said, feeling both exhilarated and disappointed at once. The tree was nothing special to look at, but I knew in my gut this was the one.

  Merry handed me a box. “We found dozens of pictures of Mama and this man. The years on the back all read 1914 and 1915. That can’t be right, can it?”

  “They all look authentic,” Ruth Anne said, flipping through the pictures in the box.

  “That would make Mother almost a hundred years old,” I added.

  “Correction.” Ruth Anne held up a photo and wiped it with the sleeve of her shirt. “That would make these pictures almost a hundred years old. It would make Miss Sasha around one hundred and twenty.”

  “Good, God. How old was she when she had us, then?” Eve tried to do the math on her fingers when Ruth Anne answered.

  “At least eighty, if not ninety.”

  “So when I saw him in Mama’s room, it wasn’t just an illusion,” Merry said. “He was really there.”

  “Now we have this photo of the Lightning Willow,” Ruth Anne said, clenching the picture of Robbie and Mother in her hand. “We can blow it up and use it to look for landmarks.” She turned to me. “We ride at dawn.”

  Leo and I stayed the night at Sister House.

  I slept on the couch, tossing and turning. I kept an uneasy eye on Leo as Eve’s words about him being an ex sex offender played in my head. He slept in a sheet fort across the living room, surrounded by an army of stuffed animals and Pillow Pets. June Bug had stroked his hand to sleep, reassuring him that we would all be there in the morning for him. Merry had done the same for me when I was a kid.

  Like mother, like daughter, I thought, wondering what kind of child I would bring into the world?

  The next morning Ruth Anne woke me up.

  “Time to get up, kiddo,” she said, grinning down at me. She was dressed head to toe in camouflage. “The day looks clear. Let’s head out.” I yawned then panicked when I didn't see Leo. “Relax, he’s having breakfast with June Bug and Miss Sasha”

  Sure enough, Leo was seated at the table between the two as Merry poured syrup over his waffle.

  “I feel like someone hit me over the head,” I said. “What time is it?”

  “It’s only six. We get up early at Chez Shantay.” Ruth Anne tossed me my jacket and a pair of her hiking boots.

  I put them on and stumbled after Ruth Anne, grimacing as I remembered the last trip I’d taken with her. We had ended up in a ditch.

  “Don’t worry,” Ruth Anne said, handing me over the keys. “Merry grounded me from the car. You’re driving.”

  Ruth Anne carried two maps, one from the turn of the last century when Dark Root was first founded and one from about two decades ago, when a surveyor had reestablished the area boundaries. When we’d blown up the photo of Mother and Robbie, we saw that the Lightning Willow stood in front of a river. According to the maps, there were three substantial waterways near Dark Root. We were going to systematically inspect them all.

  “If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be,” Ruth Anne said, marking our first stop on the more recent map.

  “I wish I were as Zen as you. What changed you?” I asked, steering off the main road and heading to a spot I had already checked out with Leo.

  “Changed me?” She rolled her neck in a circle and it cracked several times. “Life, I guess. If you don’t get the bear, the bear gets you.”

  She rolled down her window, letting the wind catch her shaggy, self-cut hair. Her glasses whipped off her face but she caught them before they were flung to the wilds. She saw me staring. “Just because I'm a four-eyes doesn't mean I lack coordination.”

  We parked and hiked to a river that was so clear I could see the rocks at the bottom. Ruth Anne pulled out a pair of binoculars and surveyed the surroundings.

  “See anything?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No, the tree is hidden, remember?”

  “Then how do you suggest we look for it?”

  “We feel for it.” She pulled out two extendable walking sticks and handed one to me. “Use it to feel the area around you. Especially empty areas. She might have been able to make it visually disappear, but not physically. No one can do that, not even David Copperfield.”

  We spent the day playing Blind Man’s Bluff, looking for an invisible tree up and down the waterways of Dark Root, feeling with our sticks along the way. I told her about Michael and Woodhaven. She told me about her father, the man who had taken her from us.

  He died her freshman year of college, prompting her to drop out and become a writer.

  “What did you write about?” I asked, poking my way through a series of sharp objects along the waterway.

  “A girl from a large family who feels all alone.”

  “Based on a true story?”

  “Only part of it.”

  “Did it have a happily ever after?”

  “There are no happily ever afters, Maggie. But sometimes we get lucky and have a few happy minutes.”

  Night was coming and we hadn’t made any progress, except for a series of X’s we marked on Ruth Anne’s maps. I was tired, hungry and, after hearing Ruth Anne’s story, a little sad.

  “If we don’t find it,” she said, as I drove us home. “Know that you gave Leo a few minutes of happiness he may not have otherwise had. Seems to me, his existence was pretty miserable before you came along.”

  “Thank you,” I said, brushing a strand of hair out of my eyes. “But we’ll find it.”

  “Are you sure about that, Mags?”

  “Yes.” Although I had my reservations, it was time to call in the big guns.

  We returned to find Mother and Leo on the swing, huddled up close and whispering secrets. They didn't notice our appearance.

  “What was it like, Leo?” Mother asked, with eyes half shut. Her hair flew like dandelions seeds behind her. “Was it beautiful?”

  He shook his head. “Scary. Dark.”

  She patted his knee. “It will be better next time. Robbie tells me there’s a beautiful garden you can wander in for days. And music. Oh, the music. I heard it once. It still calls to me.”

  “Mother!?” I said, storming up the steps. “What are you telling him?”

  She only smiled.

  “I'm sorry,” I said. “I just don’t want him to be scared.”

  She regarded me, an ancient wisdom in those crystal blue eyes. “I think you’re the one who’s scared, Magdalene.”

  Twenty-Seven

  BENT

  “You don’t have to give me the silent treatment,” I said, studying Shane.

  His face remained stoic as he gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were drained of color. He didn't stop or even slow down when we came to forks in the road or stop signs. His focus was straight ahead, and he hadn't spoken a word to me since we got into the truck.

  “If you didn't want to help me, you could have told me,” I said, rolling up my window, which he immediately rolled down with a button next to his left arm. “And you don't have to freeze me, either, literally or metaphorically.”

  I had hoped to illicit a smile with this clever line, but his eyes never moved from the road.

  At last, we arrived at Sister House.

  Shane pulled to a stop and got out of the truck without saying a word. I jogged behind him, trying to keep up. He stopped at the door, his manners getting the best of him, and knocked politely.

  “Howdy Merry,” he removed his hat and tossed it on the nearest chair. “Is your ma up?”

  “Uncle Shane!” June Bug dropped her crayons and ran to give him a hug.

  “Mama’s upstairs sleeping,” Merry answered. “You should have let me know you were coming. I could have made you some lunch.”

  “Thanks, Merry, but I just ate. I’m here to see your ma.”

  “I can wake her.”

  “No, don’t. Maggi
e, will you escort me to her room?”

  Mother slept in her bed, naked and uncovered.

  I hadn’t seen Mother unclothed, ever.

  I looked away, knowing how embarrassed she would be when she found out. But not before I noticed how loose her flesh was, hanging off her bones like chicken skin.

  Merry blushed and covered Mother with a sheet. “I should have checked her first,” she said.

  “What do you need?” I asked Shane.

  He looked around the room and pointed to an upholstered chair near the window. “Can you girls drag that over? Put it next to the bed.”

  While we got the chair, Shane removed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white work shirt. “How deeply does she sleep?” he asked.

  Merry answered. “Very. I can vacuum in here and it won’t wake her up. She’s always been a heavy sleeper, but lately it’s just scary.”

  “Well, that’s good for us. Can you light a candle and some incense if you have it? I don't need these things, but it helps me get where I need to go quicker.”

  I wrinkled my brow, watching as he settled himself into the chair while Merry attended to the candle and the incense.

  It occurred to me that he had done this before. Probably many times.

  “Turn off the lights, please. Then I need total silence. You ladies can stay in here but don’t make a sound, okay? It may take some time for me to go under and when I’m there, I may or may not speak. I’ll wake up on my own. Got all that?”

  We nodded.

  Shane slid deeper back into the chair. His right hand held the photo of Mother and Robbie, while his left reached out to Mother’s.

  She snored loudly, but did not wake up.

  “Here goes nothing,” I whispered to Merry.

  She looked at me strangely, still not understanding what we were doing.

  But she trusted us enough––or at least, she trusted Shane enough––to let it happen.

  “So you know where the tree is?”

  Shane still refused to speak to me directly.