Page 32 of A Spell for Midwinter’s Heart

The Fifth Day of Yule

The second round of snow was gentler than the first—arriving Christmas morning with little fanfare.

It passed in intermittent flurries, dusting the surface of the old snowfall, but not to the depths they had hoped.

Rowan kept finding excuses to pass by the window and check its progress, disappointed every time, trying not to note the way her mother did the same.

Christmas was a subdued occasion in the Midwinter home, being one day among many instead of the whole shebang, but they’d always spent it focused on her father’s traditions. Joe Midwinter woke up with the dawn so that oozing sticky buns arrived fresh out of the oven as soon as everyone else was up.

Stephan arrived with a reindeer-horn-clad Ozzy and a thermos of quality coffee, and they tore free bites of steaming, cinnamon-infused dough, hands sticky with honey and molten sugar. The dog scoured the floor with his wiggling nose, catching anything that fell.

When their hands were clean and bellies full, they opened the stockings, which were full of small useful things Joe had gathered over the year in hardware store sales.

Things he assumed, correctly, that his adult children had failed to buy for themselves.

Rowan shook free a glasses repair kit, jacket patching material, and a small set of hex wrenches.

After stockings came gifts. Ozzy received a fresh blanket and many bags of treats.

Liliana handed each of them a jar of rose-colored candies wrapped in ribbon.

Pop one in your mouth at the onset of a coming malady and the illness would likely pass with little fuss. They tasted terrible, but they worked.

Joe had built Liliana a new greenhouse, and for Stephan he’d put together a worktable.

“You can’t fit anything I make onto a plane,” he told Rowan.

“And I know you’ve got no room in your apartment anyway, so here.

” He handed her a check for thirty dollars made out to the SunlightCorps. “It isn’t much.”

She threw her arms around him and said, “It’s everything.”

With an inhale to stave off a rush of tears, she rose to distribute her gifts.

For her mother there was a bag of material for spellwork, all reclaimed from thrifted garments of significance—wedding dresses, christening gowns, graduation robes.

Carefully labeled so that Liliana would know what sort of energy she was dealing with.

Stephan’s gift was similar. More thrifted items for spellwork. Her father’s present was simpler—a bag of books she’d enjoyed that she knew he would appreciate as well.

Finally, Stephan handed out a series of red and green envelopes. First up was Joe’s—an image of woodland caribou, racing away through the trees. Her brother spent nearly all his free time in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest with Ozzy, laying down protective charms for endangered flora and fauna.

As his gift to each member of his family, he focused on a species of their choosing. After all, there were only so many treks one could take, and his family’s requests helped him make the difficult decision of where to focus his energies.

Joe’s voice was thick with emotion. “You found them this year.”

“I did,” said Stephan, and the two men embraced. Rowan hadn’t been there to see it, of course. Her envelope had come in the mail for the last many years. But she’d heard he hadn’t been able to find the caribou last year.

Liliana’s envelope contained a field of golden paintbrush flowers, their thick stalks rising high on a Washington prairie, while Rowan’s revealed the curious faces of tufted penguins peering out from a rocky gray strand of coast, their orange beaks a brilliant streak of color in the gloomy landscape.

Rowan had gone with him there once—mere months before she stopped casting.

They’d kayaked to an offshore island and placed warding stones around its perimeter without stepping onto land, careful not to disturb any of the nesting pairs.

As they’d left, she’d looked back and spied the colony arranged along a cliff’s edge, watching them go in silent vigil.

She’d been aware of something then, something she’d let herself lose sight of. Grand designs to save the world fell apart so easily, but small concrete actions to protect who and what you love?

That was magic.

The lumbering shape of her uncle’s brown pickup, topped with a white fiberglass shell, appeared in the driveway as her uncle and cousin arrived to join them in a walk to town. Drew sidled up alongside Rowan and shoved a small bottle into her hand.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Another present from your favorite uncle,” he said with a self-satisfied grin. He shoved his hands deep in his pockets with a jaunty walk.

“It’s a love potion,” warned Kel. Their crow followed along overhead, circling from tree to tree to match the progress of the human party.

“A love potion?” sputtered Rowan, and she shoved it back his way. “You expect me to use a love potion on someone?”

“Nah, it’s for you,” he said, elbowing her. “Chill you out a bit so you don’t shoot yourself in the tit again.”

Rowan flushed and crossed her arms firmly over her chest. “I am not drugging myself.”

Drew shook his head toward Kel. “Should’ve let me tell her it was to soften that rat’s nest she’s got going.” Rowan touched her mass of curls self-consciously.

“I would’ve told her the truth,” muttered Kel, burrowing deeper into their navy blue peacoat.

“Teach me to share my plans with you!” said Drew, throwing his arms to the sky. He jogged to catch up with Liliana and Joe, leaving the younger Midwinters alone. Ozzy wove between them, snuffling at the ground.

“What exactly was in that?” Rowan asked Kel.

“Every aphrodisiac he keeps in stock.”

“Didn’t think Uncle Drew knew the word ‘aphrodisiac,’?” Stephan interjected as he hurled a stick for Ozzy. The old hound chased after it into the trees, the bells on his collar tinkling. Ozzy leaped into the snow with the abandon of a puppy, despite his nearly ten years of age.

“He doesn’t. He calls them his ‘sexy spices.’ Added to a base of hawthorn and honey, mixed on a Friday in a new moon.” Kel looked at Rowan. “He wanted to use you as a test subject. Ever since Grandma died, he’s been after her clients.”

“Well, I keep feeling better and better about this,” muttered Rowan.

As long as there had been witches in Elk Ridge, people had come to them for magical help—even if it meant approaching under the cover of night, so that by day they could continue to disavow witchcraft. Chief among those requests were spells of health, fertility, money, and, of course, love.

People knew better than to go to Liliana Midwinter for the latter two. Money had always been out of the question, and as for love, it fell firmly into magical territory that Liliana considered forbidden. Grandmother Madeleine had had no such compunctions, and neither, it seemed, did Drew.

“You been doing any potion work with your dad lately?” asked Stephan.

“A little,” said Kel with a shrug. In the distance, their crow companion cawed, and Kel looked up at the trees, nodding.

“Kel, are you…able to talk to your friend there?” asked Rowan, glancing at the trees.

“To Zo? Talk, not really. Communicate, yes.”

The answer was both surprising and exciting. She hadn’t heard of someone having that ability, but her grandmother had always stressed that there were so many lost spells. Entire generations of magical knowledge had been destroyed in history’s many witch hunts.

They burned more than women in those fires, Grandmother Madeleine had said. They burned the knowing of women.

“Just crows or…?” prodded Stephan. He was studying their cousin closely, and Rowan could guess what he was thinking. Ozzy returned with the stick, trotting beside them.

Kel shrugged. “All the corvids, a few other birds.”

“Is there a different spell for each one?”

“More like variations, but you need to figure out the changes.”

“You know, those spells would be really useful to Stephan’s work,” said Rowan.

“How do you feel about hiking, Kel?” asked Stephan. Though he was playing it cool, Rowan knew how much it would mean for someone to join him on his walkabouts. Not only would Kel’s power expand the possibilities, but her brother, not solitary by nature, would finally have a trail buddy.

“Hate it,” said Kel, but their posture softened. “But, if it’s for a good cause…”

“Speaking of collaboration…” began Rowan, and, checking that Liliana was well out of earshot, she pitched Operation Holly and Ivy to Stephan and Kel.

“Please,” she finished. “Do not tell Mom any of this yet.”

“Let me get this straight,” Stephan said, crossing his arms. “Your answer to not wanting Mom to think you are undermining her is to…sneak around behind her back?”

Rowan winced. “I want it to be further along when we pitch it, so that she doesn’t dismiss it out of hand.”

“Or she’ll feel conspired against and shut down. But your choice. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a good idea. I’ll help however I can.”

“I’m in,” said Kel. “Better than being stuck at home with Dad.”

Ahead, the older Midwinters came to a stop. Deep in conversation, Rowan hadn’t been tracking what route they’d taken into town, and so she was caught completely off guard when she realized where they’d gone.

The strip mall at the site of the old Midwinter house.

“I want a branch from the oak for the altar,” said Liliana Midwinter, face set stubbornly.

The only thing that remained of her grandmother’s home and the lush gardens that had surrounded it were four trees—an oak, a hawthorn, an ash, and a birch, now dotting a strip mall parking lot. Dennis McCreery had tried to cut them down during construction, but every time, something stopped it.