Page 34 of The Folklore of Forever (Moonville #2)

Thirty-Four

After the third frost, if you see a pile of brightly colored fallen leaves, step around them and not over. It could be a goblin trap.

Legends and Superstitions, Expanded, Tempest Family Grimoire

“Where are we going?” I ask as the man herds us out of The Drowsing Dragon and down the path into an evening that hasn’t changed in spite of all the time we’ve passed. Surely it should be night by now, but the boxwood bushes along Hither’s paths still twinkle golden like lucky coins.

He whistles under his breath, strolling briskly along. “To Whence.”

“What’s Whence?” Hither and Whence. I like the sound when I roll them up together: hitherandwhence .

“It’s where you came from.” He checks his pocket watch, a soft wave of his hair slipping wayward over his forehead. “I’ll head there soon, too, but I’ve got a nice potion on the boil here, and it’ll misbehave if I’m not watching.”

“Wait. You’re kicking us out?”

“That’s right.”

Morgan and I put up a fight, babbling over each other. “But we just got here! You’re not going to scrub our memories, are you? Since we’re technically not at your lair?”

The witch sighs. “Morgan, you’re an amiable gentleman, but I know about your podcast. I know you write for the newspaper. You enjoy talking too much, and I can’t take any chances; I need to protect this space from prying eyes.”

Morgan clutches the man’s arm. “You know about my podcast? Do you like it? Which episode’s your favorite?” I elbow him before he can ask if the witch subscribes to his Patreon. “We won’t tell anybody, we swear. I won’t post about this online, I won’t write about it. You can trust me.”

“I truly am regretful that this is how it must go.”

“Oh come on!” I beseech. “What’s the harm in us knowing? I’m a witch, too, I’m not gonna betray you. And I still have so many questions. How long have you been the Black Bear Witch? Are you ancient, or does the role pass from generation to generation? And why are you called that? Do you turn into a black bear? What other magic can you do?”

“There is no point to answering any of that,” he replies. “You’ll just forget, anyway.”

“I will pay you four hundred dollars to let us remember this,” Morgan says. “Maybe more, if I can get a loan.”

The witch laughs. It’s a gentle, good-humored sound.

Morgan tries again. “I’ll give you my car.”

“I have no use for a car.”

I drag my feet. “How did you get so powerful? Tell us that , at least, before you make us go.”

And he does.

“As a witch, the older you get, the more of your life you’ve given to doing what magic wants, and therefore, the more reward magic gives back to you. One day when you are as old as I am, if you hold tight to your magic and don’t let it escape you, you’ll have riches of your own.” He spreads his fingers in the air, as if feeling for a change of winds, and the frame of a door appears beneath his touch. The rest of a dilapidated cabin paints itself into existence around it.

The carved owl is still taking flight. Leaving So Soon?

No! There’s too much left that I want to find out! “But my grandmother was a witch, she grew old, and she didn’t have the power to build anything like this.” I gesture to the village. “What did magic give to her?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” The man looks at me sidelong, hands clasped behind him. “Magic gave Dottie you . Luna. Romina.”

Morgan’s mouth slumps into a half frown. “How do you know about Zelda’s family?”

The man opens the door. “Be watchful where you walk in there,” he advises us. “It’s dark now, and full of life. I’ve just let loose a raccoon that transforms into a cloud of yellowjackets whenever it smells pears, and a melanistic red fox that nests on rooftops.” He interrupts our monsoon of follow-up questions with a curt shake of the head. “No, no, got to keep on moving. It’s time for you to be leaving now.”

Morgan and I face each other in a cold panic as the witch presses his hands to the backs of our necks. My body flashes cold. “We’re going to lose this,” Morgan says in despair. “We won’t remember.”

“Let him remember,” I entreat the witch. “Take it from me, but let him keep this.”

The man prods us over the threshold. “You knew how it would end when you started out.”

The forest is feral here, overgrown with wide, flabby mushrooms, split trees, and blinking yellow eyes crouched in the undergrowth. “Must be about to storm,” I surmise, tipping my head back. “The sky got black awful fast.” My feet ache from walking all day, my muscles are sore from carting luggage, and my eyes beg for sleep. Where did the brays go? Can they see us? Are they following?

“You smell something burning?” Morgan asks.

I sniff. “A conflagrinal?”

We check out our surroundings, but it’s too dark to make out any smoke.

“Something’s wrong with my phone,” Morgan murmurs. “Says the time is ten fifteen.”

“We should set up camp,” I say. “It’s too dark, there’s no way we’re finding the Black Bear Witch tonight.”

“Where’d we leave our stuff? I don’t remember setting it down.”

We shine flashlights through the woods, beams of light revealing a heavy fall of mist. My light crosses with his, landing on our suitcases forty paces away.

“Here, you hold Forte, and I’ll grab it all.” Morgan lifts the sling from around his neck, handing the gingersnappus over to me.

“Okay, but hurry .”

I’m ashamed to admit that the instant he leaves my side, I start to get nervous. And a bit sick? Almost as if he has become a necessity, and I can’t function correctly when he isn’t within touching distance. Which is ludicrous.

I am all alone.

I love being all alone.

Except maybe not all the time anymore. I am failing my own hermit-detached-from-civilization fantasies. I miss my sisters dearly, even though I know that as soon as I get back home, I will hang out with them for all of thirty minutes before I’ve drained my battery and need to recharge in the attic. I like being able to hear them through the floor, chattering, playing music, being rowdy with each other. I join in now and then, but I don’t feel the need to be right there all the time. I simply like having my people close.

I pull out my phone, suddenly anxious to talk to Luna and Romina, but I have no signal.

“Thunderation,” I mutter, replacing it in my pocket.

There’s a small pond close by and I’m running low on water, so I take the opportunity to refill my bottle. The air’s chilly, so I expect the temperature of the water to be punishing, but my fingers dip through what feels like bathwater.

“Oooh.”

I submerge my arm up to the elbow. It feels so nice that when I draw my arm back out, the air feels too cold. This must be a hot spring. I had no idea there were any hot springs in Falling Rock.

I stare at the clear indigo water, night a thick cloak around my shoulders, thinking about how fresh I must smell after a full day of hiking. I’ve accounted for every requirement on this trip except for bathing.

Not that my level of freshness matters just because he’s here. Morgan is safely outside the parameters of my romantic ideal now that I have officially shut down my attraction to him, so it isn’t that I’m particularly self-conscious, or care to impress him. This is purely courtesy.

Once Morgan has returned and we’ve set up camp again, I casually let him know my plans.

“I’m going to take off all my clothes now, so if you wouldn’t mind turning around…” I should note here that as I say this, I am facing the spring, and it takes me a beat to realize that Morgan has been facing the tent, so it appears as if I’ve asked him explicitly to turn and watch me strip.

“Uh,” he says.

“Actually, I’ll get the soap first.” I slip past him to rummage through my bags, producing a clean set of clothes. I didn’t bring a towel, another failure of forethought. “Is soap harmful to the ecosystem of a hot spring? Stupid question. Yes, it is. Never mind.”

Morgan dithers at the mouth of the tent. “Um.”

I sail right back out, sans soap. “That’s all right. I’ll freshen up with dry shampoo once I’m done.”

“Er.”

When Morgan doesn’t turn away, standing there bewildered as if he suspects I might be laying a moral trap, I swirl a finger to indicate that he needs to move. It breaks his trance.

“Zelda, it’s the last day of September. That water is going to be, like, twenty degrees.”

“It’s a hot spring.”

He eyes it with new interest. “Really?”

“Yes, and I’ve been hiking all day. I’m a mess.”

“Hm.” He steps forward, hands behind his back. “ Hmm. ”

I arch a brow.

Morgan takes another forward step. “It’s just. I’ve been hiking all day, too, and if my back’s turned the whole time you’re in the hot spring, how am I going to protect you?”

“Protect me from what?”

“Bears. Witches. Bear-witch hybrids. Aquatic paranimals.”

I hadn’t considered aquatic paranimals, which I do not think could survive in geothermally heated water, but then again, until recently I did not know about the existence of birds with wings made of smoke. “I’d hate to be eaten by a hot-spring shark that looks like a minnow just because your back is turned—”

He’s already yanking off his shoes. “Exactly. I need to watch you. Watch over you, I mean.”

“Hold on! Let me go first. And cover your eyes.”

Morgan slaps his hands over his face so fast that I can hear it. “Ouch,” he mutters.

I have to stifle a laugh. “ Turn around. ”

He obeys.

I shuck my clothing, wad up my bra and underwear inside my jacket, and jump in gracelessly, underestimating the depth of the spring when water shoots up my nose. “Bagh!”

Morgan whirls. “What’s wrong?”

“Turn around!” I repeat in a yell, even though from the neck down I’m concealed by water that, I hope, contains lots of beneficial mineral content and no deadly bacteria. But I’m not fully confident he won’t be able to see any skin, or the illusion of skin, or even a vaguely human shape.

“Sorry!” he yells back. “I didn’t see anything, I swear.”

“Okay, I’m fine now. Ready.” I keep watching him until he crosses his arms over his chest, waiting, and I remember myself. “Right. Turning. Shutting my eyes.”

Splash!

The spring has shrunk. With the two of us occupying limited space, it’s very much like a Jacuzzi. An intimate Jacuzzi in the forest, in the dark. I am suddenly overcome with the need to know whether he’s fully naked like I am, or if he’s got underwear on. I will not dip my gaze below the surface to see if I can tell. And he had better be keeping his eyes on my face. Above my face, even. He should be skygazing.

Morgan is not skygazing. His eyes rest on my face, so he knows when my attention roves over the tattooed constellations that grip his upper arms. His silky hair gleams at the crest of every wave and his skin glows like a pearl. Lips dark and full. The shapes of his eyebrows sharpen when wet. I reflect again on my romantic ideal; it is a very, very good thing that this man is not a danger to me.

We’re at the edge of October, which means there are three months left in this calendar year for me to—according to prophecy—find my True Love.

When I imagine this person I have yet to meet, I think of the peace and serenity he’ll exude. He will be honest. He will be sincere. He’ll clearly communicate his feelings, he will always say what he means (and what he means will always be sensible). Eventually we’ll buy a duplex together. I’ll have my space, he’ll have his, and we can pop in for visits via a connecting doorway. (When I mentioned this vision to my sisters recently, Romina was unsurprisingly aghast. She would crawl under her boyfriend’s shirt and live there, if she could.)

My relationship with True Love will be poetry.

“Do you think animals ever get songs stuck in their heads?” Morgan asks.

“What?”

He grins, sliding a step closer. “Just trying to throw you off. You look like you’re thinking hard about something, and I think it’d be a great idea if we didn’t think at all.”

“That is such a you thing to say.”

I couldn’t possibly entangle myself with somebody like Morgan. I am a woman of evidence and reason, and all evidence points to him being the worst possible match for me.

He’s a boisterous, unpredictable extrovert who makes the wrong recommendations to customers at the shop, recommending the Desperate Measures candle to anyone and everyone regardless of their needs, disturbing me while I’m trying to work, leaving his half-finished coffee on my stool, rearranging books in the Cavern by color, spinning his chair to hear it squeak, starting a sentence with “Guess what?” and ending it with some outlandish claim. And that isn’t even the half of it!

Sawing the violin badly on purpose. Pretending to like me just because he wanted magic powers. Taking notes on coralotes and tabbing them, and the way he looks at me as if I hold all the answers to his questions in my mouth—he looks at my mouth entirely too much—and he doesn’t mind when I’m not on time because he understands how my brain works. He encourages me to experiment, to live a little, to mix the For Wednesdays potion with the For Saturdays one and find out what sort of disaster it might bring. He rolls my suitcase through the forest and, on Aisling’s birthday, helps her to feel like a fairy queen. Wears a monster in a baby sling. Says I’m only good at this when it doesn’t mean anything.

It is confirmed, then. Morgan does not pose any danger to my heart at all.

He takes a step forward, and I take a step back, swallowing. Tha- thump , tha- thump , tha- thump . My safe-as-houses heart beats in triple time.

“You’re staring at me,” I manage to say. He doesn’t laugh at the quiver in my voice.

He holds my stare until the act feels brutal, until my skin flames and his eyes go dark, dark, dark, and my vision can’t make out anything other than him. “I’m always staring at you,” he replies.

“It’s different now.” I can barely hear myself. “Normally, I’m wearing clothes.”

“Not in here.” He taps his temple, his mouth curving. “I like to imagine you and me making use of that armchair in the Cavern of Paperback Gems. And the only things that cover you are my hands.”

I become a dragon, heat lighting me up inside. The response is involuntary; I think all he’d have to do is touch me in one particularly sensitive spot, and I’d lose myself here and now.

Morgan spreads his arms as he revolves in a half circle, head tipping all the way back until his Adam’s apple is a prominent lump in his throat. Air is scarce as I visually trace the sharp line of his jaw, the shape of his arms, his fingers, resting on the surface of the water like katydids.

Still turned in profile, he drops his gaze to my face and that smile becomes serpentine. “You look like you want something.”

I try to summon passages from books, but the door to my inner world has shut itself. A sign hangs from it that reads Not in Use. Come Back Later . I am trapped most wretchedly in the present.

“I want to kiss you,” I tell him. My pulse is now painful. “And more. I want everything.”

“Take it,” he demands roughly, his body knifing through the water as he brings himself to me.

I want to savor this.

All the world shimmers as I raise my hands, slowly, to cradle either side of his face. He closes his eyes at the contact, shuddering out a breath. Then Morgan lowers his head, and we simply stand like this for a small eternity, breathing and feeling, mouths tantalizingly close but not yet touching.

His focus rocks from my eyes to my mouth. As if he can no longer resist, our lips meet at last.

First, soft.

Then, the sweetest burn.

It is such deep pleasure, the rasp of his stubble. The flick of his tongue across the seam of my lips, bidding me to open up. And I do. I had thought, in the moments when I allowed myself to dream of this, that it would be bright colors, frenzy, like the man himself. But his touch is restrained, contemplating each deliberate action before his fingertips skim my shoulders, settle in my hair; as if he’s dreamed that this moment would be quiet and composed, like me.

So I tilt my head, moving into his body with more pressure, more heat, less inhibition—to make our moment a perfect synthesis of us both.

He guides my touch down his throat, to his chest, to his arms, wanting me everywhere.

“I love these,” I confess, tracing the tattoos on his left biceps. “What made you want the stars?”

He watches me explore his body, his eyes feverish. “Stars were the prettiest things I’d seen, at the time that I got them put on me.” Morgan leans in again, catches my lower lip delicately between his teeth. Lets go, and drops kisses to the corner of my mouth, the pulsing spot at the hinge of my jaw, the hollow of my clavicle. “That’s changed.”

I pull him to me, and kiss him harder.

Water rolls from the top of his head off the tip of his nose. It forms jewels at the ends of his hair. They collect on the swells of my breasts, snaking down between them into the black pool. His eyes track the journey, transparent with hunger. I can see the slip and swirl of water reflected in them.

He is magnetic and effortlessly eye-drawing and impossible not to become obsessed with. How did I let this happen? I know better.

“You can take more, if you want it,” I murmur into his ear.

“If I want it,” he repeats thickly. “You have no idea. You are the word want . You in this pool, for the rest of my life. That’s what I’ll think of any time I hear the word want .”

Morgan’s warm body shifts to press against me from behind, and a little moan escapes my lips. I let my head roll back to rest against his chest, and a pair of hands skate down my ribs. I know so much better, and yet I don’t care.

A knuckle brushes between my legs. And again. Barely there, just a flutter. I can feel his hard length against my backside and I want so badly to touch him but he pins my hands against my stomach and doesn’t let me.

“Please,” I say.

Morgan’s laugh is soft and wicked, murmuring into my skin. And then his ministrations halt. I stiffen, opening my eyes. Something must have caught his attention.

But then he says, in a rough scrape, “You believe me now, don’t you?”

“Believe what?”

His mouth presses a kiss to my spine, between my shoulder blades, and he lets go of a little sigh that I feel in my inner ears, between each rib, the back of my throat.

“Look at what I’ve gone and done, making myself my own biggest obstacle,” he mutters bitterly, then resumes what he was doing previously with a dedication that can only be described as worshipful. I melt against him, boneless…

And he stops again.

I’m going to come out of my skin. “ Morgan. ”

“Shhh.”

His arms encircle my body in a protective way. A way that makes my muscles seize and my heart flip for entirely different reasons. I blink the film of lust from my eyes. “What’s wrong?”

Morgan brings his lips to my ear. “I heard something.”

I open my mouth to respond but fall still when there’s a light crunch in the grasses not far from where we stand, vulnerable and naked in the water.

Something moving, disturbing twigs with their weight. Or a some one . Watching us. I try to think which would be worse, a beast or a human.

Heavy green ferns part, the massive head of a tiger emerging. It slinks toward us, five hundred pounds of stealth and teeth and speed, ocher eyes narrowing, trained on mine. I think I can hear it purr as it assesses what a satisfying meal we’ll make.

Morgan sucks in a sharp breath, whispers, “Any chance that looks like a unicorn to you?”