Page 19 of The Folklore of Forever (Moonville #2)
Nineteen
Will-o’-the-wisps have been known to lure many a lost traveler.
Legends and Superstitions, Expanded, Tempest Family Grimoire
Things that can cause the appearance of bright light over water:
Moonlight reflecting off surfaces.
The mixture of marsh gas, decaying matter, and other natural gases.
Bioluminescent fungi, algae, etc.
Ball lightning.
Hallucination induced by lack of sleep, folie à deux.
Magic??
Hours later, on Lughnasadh proper, I join my family for their tradition of planting a fruit tree on Tiptop Hill. Great-Aunt Misty and her granddaughter, Nitya, spend the day with us. Nitya is known for denim on denim, jumpsuits, and statement jewelry: the red plastic necklace she’s blown into town with this time is as big around as a steering wheel. Nitya wears her black hair in a beehive and an African gray bird called Odyssey, who likes to imitate her loud laugh, on her shoulder. Nitya is a nomad, like I used to be before I got tired of it, but she takes her role as Aisling’s godmother seriously and is always in Moonville for her birthday (and pops in every couple of months with interesting gifts for her).
“Shapes and colors,” Nitya is saying now to Morgan and Trevor. We’re in the shop, and I’ve been spacing out of the conversation as I obsess tiredly over the ball of light Morgan and I saw last night, jotting down my thoughts in a pocket-sized notebook. But at shapes and colors , I glance up.
She’s telling them about her gift.
“It first started happening when I was around ten,” Nitya goes on. “I’d be going about my day, when all of a sudden, all of the colors I could see turned gray, except for one. Like, my classroom would turn black and gray with the exception of anything red. Or I’d be reading a magazine, and anything in it that wasn’t blue would suddenly turn gray. It freaked me out. My dad took me to the doctor, but they couldn’t figure out what was causing it.”
Trevor is perched on the checkout counter. Morgan leans against it, entirely too close to me. A miniature Devil Zelda appears on my left shoulder and goes, Psst. You could touch him right now if you wanted to. A knee, an elbow. I flick her off, but she materializes on my right shoulder. What if you reach out and put your hand on his cheek? What’s stopping you? You have free will!
Morgan props a fist under his chin, engrossed in the story as I wage battle with my naughty impulses. “Then what happened?”
Nitya’s mindlessly drawing a portrait of me on the back of receipt paper, using a burning incense stick. “I was learning how to embroider one day, and all of the thread in my sewing basket turned grayscale except for a spool of light green. So I used the green to stitch a leaf onto my jacket. Once I was done with that leaf, my spool of green turned gray, and a different spool that had been gray suddenly turned pink. So I used the pink to stitch a flower to the leaf. On and on it went, until I ended up with a pattern of a tulip sprouting out of a teacup. Once I was finished with the last stitch, I felt this instant sense of protection, like whoever wore the jacket would be safe from any harm. And all the other colors came back. I realized this was my magical gift, and that I’m supposed to embroider spells.”
“What happens when you use the gray threads? Have you tried?”
She dips her head in a deep nod. “Any time I do that, it feels so wrong. It’ll feel like cold water’s dripping onto the top of my head, or like I’ve scraped the back of my ankle even when I haven’t, or suddenly, it’ll be as if I’m running through the airport terminal, right as the flight I’m supposed to be on takes off.”
I stare at her, thinking about last night when Morgan wanted to turn right and I sensed, down to my bones, that we should go left.
“We get that, too,” Romina tells him. “Luna and me. Not colors turning grayscale, but with our own magic, we get tactile sensations and relive bad memories when we’re not doing what magic wants. It’s like the magic is guiding us. When I’m picking flowers for a flora fortune and I choose one for a client that magic doesn’t agree with, it’ll force me to think about the time I was followed for two blocks by a hornet, or something to that effect. Then when I put the wrong flower down and pick up one that magic wants, I’m rewarded.”
“How? In what way?” I ask quickly. When Romina and Luna both turn their surprised expressions on me, I sniff and pretend to focus on my notes, hair falling forward in a tumble to conceal half my face. “Just curious, that’s all.”
“You’ve never asked about it before,” Luna remarks thoughtfully. But she then adds, “Good memories. Nice, happy images, like sipping hot chocolate during the first snow or how it feels when you’re at the movies and the lights dim, the previews finally starting. When I mixed just the right scents to make a candle yesterday, magic unlocked an old memory of when I was a little kid. Back when Grandma still lived upstairs, and where Ash’s bedroom is now, there was a sewing room with Dad’s bed and dresser from when he was young.” Luna’s eyes haze over as she peers into the memory. “I was standing behind Grandma as she opened a dresser drawer and took out a blanket to show me. It was Dad’s baby blanket, with his name stitched on. It smelled like a pine forest, so there must’ve been sachets in there. Then she took out clothes she used to wear in the seventies and let me try on a yellow silk nightgown. She liked showing me old things, telling me the stories behind them. There’s no way I could have remembered that on my own, without magic.”
“The lost memories are my favorite,” Romina says, smiling as she reminisces. “They’re always random, so it’s hard to say how magic finds these memories, why it chooses them specifically. Thanks to magic, I’ve remembered events that happened when I was only a baby. Before I even understood most words.”
My heart clenches with longing and jealousy. Could that happen to me? I want to remember long-ago moments with Grandma, too. It’s jarring every time I see Aunt Misty, because she so closely resembles Dottie. They have the same long, thin nose and drooping mouth. White hair. Sparse, rounded eyebrows that sit farther apart than their eyes do. I want to tell Nitya to stay home for a while, spend more time with her grandmother while she still can. Dottie and I talked on the phone all the time during my years away, but I wish we’d seen each other in person more.
I’m keen to hear if it might be possible for me to unlock good memories, but if I reveal my interest, they’ll ask questions. I debate how to go about casually digging for information, but by the time I’ve worked up the nerve, they’re back to talking about Nitya’s magical embroidery again.
“She sewed a cute little ice cream cone onto my shirt collar, years ago,” Luna says. “I was wearing that shirt when we went to the Pumpkin Show in Circleville. Remember, Romina?” She and Romina nod at each other. “I got lost and two guys started following me. One of them grabbed my shoulder, and boom! Fell backward like I’d punched him. Swear to god, it was Nitya’s magic that did it.”
Misty nods. “I’ve got a scarf Nitya made for me, and I wear it whenever I’ve got to take my car to the mechanic. Nobody ever tries to overcharge me when I’m wearing that scarf.”
Morgan blasts her with his full attention. “Are you a witch, too?”
Misty beams. “Oh yes! I make teas to induce astral projection and lucid dreaming.” She sweeps a knuckle across clay stains on her overalls. “And I’m a potter, so part of my business is creating personalized teacups to align with one’s birth chart. The teas by themselves will work for anyone, but they’re far more potent when consumed from a bespelled vessel such as one of my cups.”
“I’d love to astral-project.” Morgan’s eyes gleam. “Will you teach me how? What would I be able to see? When my consciousness leaves my body, can it fly to another town? State? Continent? Could I astral-project to Santorini? Wait!” He waves his arms as if to erase that last bit. “I wanna know how to get to Saturn .”
She appraises him narrowly, then smiles. “You’re an Aries. Gemini rising.”
His chin drops. If possible, he’s squeezed even closer to her, oblivious that he’s resting an elbow over my paper and making it impossible for me to write. “How could you tell?”
“It oozes from you.” Misty pats his cheek. “Come by my shop anytime, love. Tempest in a Teapot, in Cuyahoga Falls. We’re on Graham Road, right next to the Panera. Come get some tea, then sit next door and astral-project to Santorini with a tuna salad sandwich.”
“I am sincerely going to do just that.”
Luna runs upstairs to check on the bread she’s got baking—parsley, garlic, chives, and cheese—and glides back down with a loaf to send home with Misty and Nitya, who have to leave soon because they’ve got a three-and-a-half-hour drive home. Magical-practicing Tempests always bake bread with fresh-picked herbs on Lughnasadh, and right before bed, they eat blueberry cake dusted with powdered sugar. Wafting Crescent offers such a cake as their daily special, every Lughnasadh, for this reason.
And I, who do not (officially) practice magic, am perfectly content to enjoy the food so long as I don’t have to bake any of it myself.
“I almost forgot.” Misty pats her pockets, fishing out a small object from the wide front pocket of her overalls. “I’ve got a good feeling about this one.” She drops a brass key, quite old-looking, with a miniature queen’s crown welded to one end, into Luna’s palm.
“That metal looks the same color as the lock,” I remark as Luna inspects the key.
“I’ll go get it!” Romina retrieves Grandma’s mysterious locked box, and we gather around as Luna inserts the key.
Click.
“Ahhh!” we squeal.
“What is it, what is it?” Nitya pops her head between Luna and me.
A jewelry box with a musty odor. There are tiny velvet rolls in the top compartment, cradling four rings. None of the rings are particularly attractive, and two were obviously meant for children, as they’re too small to fit any of us.
But in the bottom compartment, folded in half to fit, are papers.
We all grab for them, and in the scuffle, I end up with Grandma’s spidery cursive scrawled across the backs of a water bill, half of a beeswax invoice, and a grocery list:
March 12 1981 Mike can’t find shoe, check basement ? March 16 1981
April 6 1981 Mike late for school looking for stray cat ? September 7 1981
July 21 1981 Mellow will pass on Christmas Eve ? December 24 1981
June 30 1984 Baby girl ? June 28 1991
September 4 1984 Woman named Rachel joins family ? August 23 1987
November 13 1984 Black-haired man and red-haired woman run from mouse
May 6 1999 Delphine 7 lb 13 oz 20 in
October 31 1999 Misty will pass on a Friday in April, asteroid
“What the frack is all this?” Nitya mutters, leafing through pages.
“Grandma’s predictions, I think,” Luna replies. “The dates she had her prophetic dreams are over here , and the dates with checkmarks are when her predictions came true. Listen to this: February 10, 1975. Little blond girl falls from broken swing, injures elbow. ” She lifts her elbow to display the faint scar bisecting it. “She knew that was going to happen before I was even born!”
“She knew Mom was going to marry Dad, too.” I point at Woman named Rachel joins family .
Misty reads the paper in my hand over my shoulder. “An asteroid? Do I get hit by an asteroid?!”
“I hope that’s how I go,” Trevor says yearningly. “Imagine getting cratered. It would make for the most awesome final view, and then you’ve already got half the burial finished.”
Misty backs away from the box, hands in the air. “This is what I get for trying to find out what’s in locked boxes. Boxes are locked for a reason. Now I’ve got to live the rest of my life wearing a hard hat, trying to hide from the sky. Goddamn it, Doireann, you saw this happening twenty-four years ago! You couldn’t have warned me?”
“Maybe the asteroid doesn’t hit you,” Morgan suggests. “Maybe there just happens to be one passing by on the day that you die. A little aerial hello before you go.”
“Who’s Delphine?” I ask. “Any of us know a Delphine?”
Everybody shakes their heads. “I know a Delaney,” Nitya says. “Maybe she got the name wrong?”
“She was never wrong,” Luna and Misty reply in unison.
Spooky.
We decide it’s for the best if we stop reading, because if Grandma’s predictions were never wrong, then there’s nothing we can do to avoid our fates. Keep going, and I might see something like Zelda will be devoured by a hippopotamus . While folding the papers back up, I come across one that catches my eye.
Grandma’s drawn a crude map with a few words scratched in— BBW, cave, trestle. In the middle, it says Falling Rock Triangle , and below that, in faded pencil: Where lost things go.
“What a woman,” I marvel. “Gone for a year now, and she’s still confusing us.”
Romina smiles sadly. “She isn’t gone , gone. But goodness, I miss seeing her.”
“And her traveler’s talismans,” Nitya pines. “Remember those? Delicious. ”
For the autumn equinox, Grandma used to bake small golden cakes shaped like triangles, called traveler’s talismans. Luna had called the cakes pirate hats . Grandma said they were shaped that way because triangles are the most protective shape in witchcraft, but also, when traveling in these woods at Halloweentime, you’re supposed to carry a triangle on you as a talisman. If you accidentally slip into the realm of the dead when the veil is thin and you can’t find your way, a triangle will aid your return.
“I’d kill for the recipe,” Luna muses. “I’ve had Ash beg Grandma for it a million times, and she always says I’ll get it as a present eventually. Ghosts don’t have a lot of options for gift-giving, so she insists on spacing out whatever she’s got. She knows where I lost one of my bracelets, but she’s saving the location reveal for Christmas. Why are grandmothers like this?”
The others keep chattering on, but my mind has caught a snag on triangles, and I can’t stop staring at the peculiar diagram. What sort of prediction was this? Where lost things go.
BBW. Cave. Trestle.
BBW.
“The Black Bear Witch,” I whisper.