Page 4 of The Bane Witch

4

Myrtle

Meeting her was a shock.

I didn’t grow up with family. My father died before I was born. I had no siblings. If there were grandparents, they never came for birthdays or holidays, so I just assumed they’d all died. Eventually Gerald came along, but he wasn’t family. My mother clung to him out of some desperate longing for normalcy, trying to create the appearance of a true American household. But we were always just loose parts stowed together. We didn’t fit. Even when it was only my mom and me. Sometimes I would catch her looking at me, as if I were a thing to be wary of.

I was nine years old and deep into the shame of my nightly forays in the woods and the resulting diagnosis when a woman showed up. I remember lounging on a plastic chaise in the backyard when she came strolling over, a thick flood of dark hair pouring over her shoulders, flashing with copper glints, like mine. She was exquisite in a pair of stiff, wide-leg pants, the scuffed leather toe of her boots peeking out, little purple flowers embroidered on her shirt, and a knit scarf wrapped too many times to count around her neck.

She stood over me as I froze, staring up into those twinkling eyes, the color of shamrocks. “Do you know me, child?”

I shook my head slowly.

“Just as well.” She sighed. “Let me get a look at you.” Bending down, she lifted my chin, turning my face as she studied it. I’d been at the berries again, and a thick drop of wine-colored juice sat on my lip. She wiped it off with a finger that she quickly put in her mouth, tasting. “Stick out your tongue,” she told me, straightening.

I did as I was told. It was no doubt stained a blistering magenta color.

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “Where’s your mother?”

I pointed toward the house, the sliding glass doors that led into the living room.

Without another word, she marched across our lawn and let herself in.

Once she disappeared inside, I crept slowly behind and wedged myself under the kitchen window so I could eavesdrop.

“Can’t just come striding in here!” I caught my mother saying.

“Shall I go back out and knock?” the woman asked.

“No, of course not. But what if Gerald had been home?” my mother continued.

I could practically hear the woman shrug. “I’m sure he’ll learn what you are sooner or later. And then what, Lily? Have you asked yourself that?”

My mother made a disgruntled noise.

I rose on the balls of my feet and peered over the window ledge. My mother was leaning back against the kitchen sink, hands gripping the counter. Before her, the woman loomed, tall as any man and straight as a pine tree.

She picked up a coffee mug from the nearby dinette table. It was Gerald’s favorite, shaped like a football, and was never far from his ashtray. “What are you playing at, Lily?” she asked my mother with a tsk. “You know better than this. We aren’t on an episode of Bewitched. Our magic doesn’t work like that. There is a price for being who we are, what we are.”

My mother scowled. She walked over and pulled the mug from the woman’s hand, tucking it against her chest. “Don’t tell me how to live my life.”

“Someone has to.” The woman flourished an arm to indicate the house. “This is not a life for us. You know that. This is not something we get to have.”

“He takes care of us,” my mother stubbornly insisted. “You wouldn’t understand, but we need him.” She set the cup in the sink. “You made your choices,” she said quietly. “And I make mine.”

“What would Grandma Laurel say?” the woman admonished. “This is my sister’s fault. Angel was always dreaming of a different life when we were growing up—princes and kisses and fairy tales—running headlong into what she knew she couldn’t have. She never taught you right.”

“This has nothing to do with her,” my mother quietly insisted.

“It has everything to do with her,” the woman replied. “She was a fool. And she’s made you one as well. Took me long enough to find you here, playing housewife while that daughter of yours languishes in the dark with no clue of her heritage, already in bloom, early just like you.”

Suddenly, my mother spun on her. “Leave Piers out of this. She’s a child.”

The woman rolled her eyes again. “If only. She’s one of us, Lily, and she’ll overripen. It will cost her, if it hasn’t already. Just like it did you.”

My mother’s head shot up. “Don’t you dare speak of it.”

The woman sighed and placed a hand on my mother’s shoulder. “I’m trying to help you, Lily. Please let me.”

My mother shook her off. “Like you helped my mother?” She gave a hard stare. “Thank you, but we’ll help ourselves. Piers’s gifts will wither on the vine. Mine have. Muscles atrophy when you stop using them.”

The woman looked sad, the delicate corners of her lips curving down. “You know it doesn’t work like that.”

“Doesn’t matter,” my mother said. “We have drugs now, things that weren’t available to our mothers and grandmothers. We don’t have to be this anymore. I’m getting better every day. She’s getting better every day.”

The woman rubbed forcefully at her forehead. “You don’t really believe that, Lily. Let me take her before it’s too late. Let me teach her. I know Patrick’s death has been hard on you. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, love happens. No one blames you for that. But this… it’s bordering on unforgivable. Whatever my sister’s faults, even she saw reason in the end. Let me do this for you, for her. To keep you both safe.”

“She’s my daughter. Not yours,” my mother snapped. “How dare you come here and threaten me.”

The woman drew herself up to her full height, stiffening. “She belongs to the venery, Lily. The family. She’s not yours alone. She’s also my great-niece. We have to look out for each other.”

“I don’t have a family,” my mother said coldly.

The woman’s face hardened to a beautiful edge. “No,” she agreed with just as much venom. “I suppose you don’t anymore. You should be careful, Lily. Those who hunt alone often starve. ”

My mother narrowed her eyes. “I don’t hunt anymore. But if I catch you near me or Piers again, I’ll expose us all. You know I can.”

The woman tapped a finger against her arm before finally speaking. “When he finds out, this man of yours—and he will—he dies. Do you understand?”

My mother didn’t respond.

“Lily, promise me, and I won’t tell them where you are. If you don’t, I can’t stop them—”

“Yes,” she interrupted, her shoulders sagging, beaten. “I understand.”

The tall woman sighed. “Educate her while there’s still time. At the very least, explain what’s happening to her. She’s more lost than you ever were. We need her, Lily.”

Angry tears slipped down my mother’s face. “Go,” she answered through gritted teeth, her head hanging. “Just go.”

I watched as the other woman spun away from the kitchen, heading toward the door. Ducking, I stumbled a few steps into the grass before the sliding door opened and she stepped out, my mother behind her. She looked between us, her face suddenly uncertain. “Your… aunt was just leaving. Say goodbye, Piers.”

I waved as she started past me. The glass door slammed, my mother retreating into the house. The woman paused in the yard, beckoning, and I approached her. “Piers—that’s an unusual name,” she said.

“It’s for boys,” I told her.

“Is that what you think?” She eyed me skeptically.

I nodded. “Mommy wanted a boy instead of me. She said so.”

Her eyes softened. “Your mother loves you, child, whatever foolishness she speaks.” Her fingers toyed with a lock of my hair, nearly identical to her own.

“But…” I whispered, confessional, “I did a bad thing.”

Her eyes flared wider, flicking to the house and back. “Did you now?”

I nodded slowly, brimming with unexpected tears.

She brushed them away with the end of her scarf. It smelled of plums and rosemary. “There now. We mustn’t cry over spilt milk. Was this very recently?”

I craned up at her, my neck crunching behind the weight of my head as I shook it from side to side.

Her eyes glittered like something shimmering in the dark. “Did he hurt you, the bad thing you did? Did he hurt you first?”

I gaped, my mouth a porthole—how did she know?—and shook my head again.

“I bet,” she began, “that if you think very hard, you’ll find he hurt someone even if it wasn’t you.”

The lips like death, the unblinking eyes—the woman I’d seen only in my mind, like a streak of memory, when I’d first laid eyes on him. “But I hurt him,” I tried to explain. Didn’t she see the danger inside me, the storm corralled by my ribs?

Bending, she said sweetly, “Things are not always as they seem, Piers. Remember that. A very little poison can do a world of good. It’s all about how you apply it.”

I didn’t understand yet, but her words touched something small and raw inside me, soothing the inflammation.

“Tell me, do you know what a crow is?” Her long, bold form intrigued me. My mother always made herself smaller, her shoulders curled with shame and grief and things I didn’t understand. This woman held her head so high I thought her neck might snap.

I nodded. “They nest in the trees behind the house.”

She smiled, her lips parting beguilingly. “We are a family of crows,” she told me. “Don’t forget that. The other children you know, they’re hawks or sparrows, doves or starlings. But you, dear girl, are a crow. Do you know what sets a crow apart?”

I shook my head.

“Crows feed on what others can’t.” She stared down at me. “Including other birds.”

I gulped, feeling the ominous energy behind her statement.

She smiled tightly. “I live in a place called Crow Lake, as it so happens. It’s in New York near the Canadian border. Do you know where Canada is?”

“Above America.”

“Right. Smart girl.” She smiled wider and my heart leapt at the attention. “I want you to remember where I live. If you ever need me, come find me there. Now, tell me, where can you find me, Piers?”

“Crow Lake,” I said.

“Good.” She gave a brusque nod and turned to walk away.

“Wait!” I called. “Who are you?”

Her eyes pierced my own. “Why, your aunt Myrtle of course.”