Page 6 of A Spell for Midwinter’s Heart

The First Day of Yule

Rowan awoke to the sound of glass clinking against wood. Her back protested, stiff, as she sat up from the futon, disentangling herself from the afghan and an additional bedspread someone had laid over her in the night.

The fire had long since extinguished, the morning air was cool and crisp, and she fell into the disorienting sensation of being lost in time—as though waking here were the norm, and everything else had only been a fit of fantasy.

But with every blink of sleep cleared away, the feeling receded.

She groped about for her glasses and when she slid them onto her face, reality came back into focus.

Across the room, a jar full of dried black and lavender tea leaves floated into its place on the shelves that lined the kitchen walls from floor to ceiling.

An array of colorful glass caught the morning light—a kaleidoscope containing everything from cumin to brown rice to chunks of crystals and charcoal.

Bundles of drying herbs wound with twine dangled like curtains from ceiling racks up among the exposed beams of the ceiling.

Despite the clutter, there was a sense of organization to it all. Everything had a place. Unlike Rowan’s studio apartment, which contained considerably less stuff and yet somehow was always a disaster.

She rolled off the couch to unzip her roller bag, excavating a chunky cream-colored sweater. Her mother was warm-blooded and hadn’t bothered to light a fire yet, though the effort would have taken only a few familiar words and a wave of the hand.

Rubbing hard against her arms, Rowan called out, “Couldn’t do me a solid and get the fire going?”

“Didn’t know when you’d be up,” came an amused reply from the kitchen. “Or if you might sleep all day.”

With a sound like a sharp inhale of air, the fireplace burst into activity. Flames licked their way over the half-burned logs while two more fresh-split pieces floated from a heavy metal basket to join the others.

“Good morning,” said her mother, “or should I say afternoon?”

“It’s not even ten!”

“I’ve been up for four hours. Your dad’s been up for three.

” Lili Midwinter straightened and smiled through a graying mass of red-brown curls.

She and Rowan were the exact, decidedly average height, but her mother’s habit of remaining in perpetual motion had rendered Liliana the thin version of their shared frame.

The similarities continued into their eyes—hazel with a constellation of gold flecks.

“And yet,” said Rowan, crossing her arms, “none of that changes the fact that the literal definition of afternoon is ‘after’ noon.”

“Mmm.” Lili poured a steady stream of water from the kettle into a matted nest of tea leaves in an owl-shaped strainer on a pine green earthen mug.

From the many cooling pans, the mess on the counter, and the wafting of butter in heat, it was clear she was already hard at work preparing for the Solstice dinner.

Rowan hooked an ankle around the base of a barstool and slid it across the hardwood floor with a loud scrape before flopping down in front of a basket of many-colored eggs. Light blue, creamy olive, everything but the bleached white Rowan had to settle on at the grocery store.

“Is Stephan coming over for breakfast?” asked Rowan, looking at the spot her older brother had once claimed at the bar.

“Nope, but he’ll be here tonight. If you want to see him sooner, head over to the festival. He’s working the Guardians’ booth.”

“Still slinging a chain saw?” Her brother had apprenticed to a local chain saw artist and now carved statues at a roadside stand—or apparently at Winter Fest during the holidays.

“Still at it, surprisingly,” said her mother with a snort. Given his prior employment record, no one had expected it to stick, but he’d been at it for at least three years now. Which was two years longer than Rowan had ever stayed at a job.

I’d almost beaten my record. The thought was sharp.

Her mother sawed off a pat of butter with a spatula before letting it plop into a hot skillet with a sizzle. Moments later, eggs joined it with a series of delightful pops and finally a sprinkle of chives.

“Your dad said you got in late?”

“Yep, flight was canceled, so we drove.”

“We?” Liliana’s voice was innocent—too innocent. She dumped a white cascade of flour and leavening into her yeast mixture and turned it with her hand, testing the consistency before gradually adding more flour when it clung, sticky, to her skin.

Rowan rolled her eyes. “Don’t make me say it. I know Dad already told you.”

“Gavin was always a good-looking kid. That said…” She paused, staring Rowan in the eye. “He is a McCreery.” Liliana pulled the dough from the bowl and tossed it hand to hand, slapping it in satisfaction as her hands finally stayed clean.

Rowan’s stomach fluttered. “Don’t worry. He’s still as infuriating as ever. No risk of an Elk Ridge Romeo and Juliet.”

“Good. Because there’s plenty else to worry about right now.”

Her mother’s words hung heavy in the air as she moved back to the skillet.

The dough continued roiling through the motions of kneading, as though hands were still punching and pressing, even though no such hands were present.

Rowan relaxed her gaze. Tiny filaments of bright white light now surrounded the bread.

They hung as taut threads connecting to her mother, and the longer Rowan looked, the more she would find woven throughout the house, joined to a solid rope of white light that blazed down her mother’s center before plunging into the earth.

Noticing her attention, the filaments of light pulsed and wiggled in her direction. With a huff and a frown, she shut her awareness back down, the world going mundane once again.

Her mother pulled a golden loaf of bread from a linen bag with a puff of flour and sliced through the thick crust in a heavy sawing. “My sourdough starter turned thirty years old. Thought about throwing it a party, but wasn’t sure anyone would come.”

She winked and plated the slice before picking up her skillet to tip the eggs on top. With Rowan’s breakfast settled, she returned to kneading.

Rowan watched. “Why do you bother when you can do that with magic?”

“If I didn’t hit bread, I’d probably hit someone else.”

“Mmm. Maybe I should hit more bread.”

“I recommend it.”

Rowan dug into her breakfast, sucking bright orange yolk off her fingertips as she filled her mouth with sour, spongy bread.

The warm food and the rhythm of her mother’s movements lulled her senses, and she almost surrendered to it, but then her gaze happened to travel out the kitchen window, where the sight of the dry earth snapped her back to reality.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the snow?” she asked.

Her mother took a sharp breath. “You don’t want to wait until after breakfast to have this conversation?”

Rowan shoved the plate away, knowing it would be laced with her mother’s power. The Midwinter home was so woven with Liliana’s spells that when looked at all together, they became like a net—a net designed to nurture, but one that trapped, nonetheless.

“So that you can lull me with hearth magic first?” said Rowan with a shake of the head. “No, thanks.”

“Rowan…”

“You want me to take part in some kind of spell, don’t you?”

Liliana pressed into the counter and rocked back and forth. “We need you to take Grandma’s place in the circle. Stand in the east for us—please. Help us bring the snow back.”

“Why not ask me before I got here?”

“Would you have come?”

“I deserved the choice.”

“You still have it to make.”

Rowan’s eyes fell. “But you knew it would be harder if I were here. If I were around…all of this.” She gestured toward the blighted wilderness and the town beyond.

Her mother reached out and put a hand over hers. “We need you, Rowan. Trust me, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t an emergency. All our spells have…fizzled. The magic’s too big for seven. Someone new should’ve come by now and taken her place, but no one’s come. Just you.”

Just you. The coven never stayed incomplete for very long.

There were always eight. Four to stand in the cardinals, and four in the ordinals.

When they lost a member, someone always seemed to be waiting in the wings, ready to assume the mantle, or if not already there, soon after.

But it had been months now, and no one had come.

It wasn’t normal. None of this was normal.

Her heart picked up speed and her breathing went ragged at the edges as her nervous system readied for a storm.

“I can’t,” said Rowan.

“Try,” said Liliana, her voice strained. “Please.”

Rowan searched for the words to explain but fell short, shaking her head. “I can’t.”

Her mother’s eyes pried. “Can we finally talk about what happened that night, Rowan?” Her expression was one Rowan remembered her often directing toward Grandmother Madeleine. It was a look that said, You deal in magic I don’t approve of. “Did you…compel someone to do something?”

“No! How could you think that?”

“What am I supposed to think? You refuse to explain!”

Shame, cold and undeniable, dragged Rowan back to that night.

She should have joined the coven for their spell, but it was nothing but a vague request for good fortune.

No one in the Elk Ridge coven had any spells to manifest money—had they, their lives would have looked quite different.

But money had a power of its own, and that power was the antithesis of what they dealt in.

Rowan had thought their spell would make no difference, and she’d told her mother as much. They’d fought, and she’d decided it was time for direct action, with or without her mother’s approval. She’d gone for her grimoire, her spell chest, and then—

The memories cut out. Whatever spell she’d attempted to save her grandmother’s house, it had failed.

Rowan looked away and shook her head. Her mother’s eyes bored into her, trying to extract the story Rowan wouldn’t tell.

When Liliana finally spoke again, it was to say, “We’re doing maybe half of normal business. The festival’s failing. Dennis is pushing us to sell. He even has a potential buyer.”

Rowan’s head snapped up. Dennis McCreery wanted to sell the festival? Did Gavin know? It seemed impossible that he didn’t, and that meant he’d spent that entire car ride hiding this from her.

All of her earlier guilt at her behavior in the car vanished, replaced with righteous anger.

Sarah McCreery, née Larsson, mother to Gavin and late wife of Dennis, had been one of two starry-eyed twenty-somethings who’d founded the Elk Ridge Winter Fest during the late 1980s.

The second was Liliana Midwinter. The idea of Sarah and her mother as bosom buddies had never seemed real, but the evidence was clear in the photo hanging over her mother’s desk.

The pair of them stood at the gate of the inaugural festival, arms wound around each other.

When Sarah had died, her half of the festival’s ownership had passed to Dennis, and he’d been making Liliana Midwinter miserable ever since.

She sighed. “You think bringing back the snow will stop the sale?”

“Snow will bring back the tourists,” said her mother, her voice ringing with conviction.

Rowan chewed her lip. “Seems like a lot to expect. There’s, what, eleven more days until the New Year? And then—”

Liliana slapped the ball of dough onto the counter hard, cutting Rowan off.

“Do you always have to assume I’m wrong, Rowan?”

“I’m not ‘assuming you’re wrong,’ I’m only saying maybe we should think about—”

“I have thought about it. All of it. Many times, while you were off…” Her mother waved her hand, dismissing all of Rowan’s work with a gesture.

Seeing technology as the primary source of the world’s problems, Liliana Midwinter would never concede that more technology was the solution.

“I understand what we’re up against. I know Elk Ridge. You don’t—not anymore.”

The accusation hit like a smack, and the air was heavy between them.

Finally, Rowan spoke, careful to control her tone and word choice. “You’re right. I don’t, and no matter what, the mountains need the snowpack. It’s a solid plan.”

“Thank you,” said her mother with a heavy release of breath. Liliana returned to her kneading, her movements restored to a consistent rhythm.

Pushing back from the counter with a scrape, Rowan said, “I need a coffee. Taking a walk into town.”

“We’ve got coffee here.”

“You have instant Folger’s. I’m going for coffee.” In truth, she needed to get out of the house—away from her mother’s magic, to a place where she could examine everything with a clear head.

“If you’re going into town, can you drop these off?

” Liliana gestured toward a basket full of iced breads wrapped in beeswax paper and wound with twine.

Their tags were labeled with familiar names, all of whom would be found behind counters on Elk Ridge’s main street.

They oozed hearth magic, blessings of health to her friends and neighbors.

The top loaf was labeled Zaide.

“Where’s Zaide working these days?” asked Rowan.

Her mother glanced up with a blink of surprise. “The magic shop. You didn’t know?”

The revelation stopped Rowan in her tracks. Zaide Hak, her childhood best friend, was working at the Magick Cabinet? She’d been managing a bar—at least, at last update, and that had been…how long ago?

Too long. More than a year. And that had been on Rowan.

She had a tendency to lose track of things, to come up for air and find that hours, days, weeks, months, even years had gone by since she’d last touched grass.

Folk stories of people wandering into faerie hills and losing years were much easier to accept when your own executive function didn’t assign much importance to time.

All of that was only an excuse, though, an excuse to avoid the lingering sadness after their calls. Zaide was a tie to Elk Ridge, and while she couldn’t quite cut it, she had let it fray.

“She started working for us when the Goose closed a couple of months ago. Took over as manager. It’s gotten hard to keep up with the shop during festival season…Having Zaide on staff’s been night and day.” Liliana gazed out the window. “I wish I didn’t have to wonder how long we can afford her.”

Zaide was managing the Magick Cabinet? It was possible Liliana would have hired any responsible person to run the register and restock the shelves, but she’d only hire a manager who knew their stuff. Their magic stuff. Did that mean Zaide had taken up the craft?

Her best friend had seen enough over the years to believe that the Midwinters’ witchery was the real deal, but she’d never expressed an inclination toward practicing it herself. At least not to Rowan.

“Are you saying that Zaide joined the coven…?” said Rowan.

“She joined the coven about ten months ago. Now she stands for us in the south.”