Page 40 of The Folklore of Forever (Moonville #2)
Forty
Fablefinding: The supernatural practice of gathering stories lost in nature.
Family Witchcraft, Tempest Family Grimoire
My favorite time of year is that dark pocket between autumn and winter, when it isn’t freezing yet but the landscape has ceased to be conventionally pretty, after the trees have caught their deaths and it’s foggy and gloomy and rainy. The sky doesn’t know if it wants to storm or snow. Everyone hates the weather, how the colors of autumn have run together into a blobby gray-brown-black wash. With the leaves stripped, you can see the lovely twists of tree limbs, their unique shapes. I call it perfect tea-steeping, book-reading weather.
“I hate this time of year,” Romina declares miserably as we collect our drinks from DeShawn and James. Their seasonal beverage truck, The Sleepy Shrew, is only in operation from Halloween through New Year’s, and whenever they appear on Vallis Boulevard on October 31, the lines for spiced cider are preposterous.
“There, there.” I toast my milky oolong against her hot chocolate. “Spring will be here soon.”
“In one hundred and forty-one days,” she grumbles, sparing a dark glance for Luna. “I don’t know how you can wear that right now.”
Luna’s dressed in denim shorts and a crochet tank. “I don’t get cold.”
I poke her. Our older sister is eternally bragging that she never gets cold, flaunting Birkenstocks and halter tops in the dead of winter. Romina and I can’t tell if she’s committed to the bit and is secretly freezing, or if she should be studied by science.
The chilly air is rich with fryer oil and salt, the Midnight at Moonville festival in full swing now that sunset has begun to paint itself between the trees.
“Ferris wheel?” Morgan suggests. His face is still wet from bobbing for apples. He dunked his whole head repeatedly until I made him stop, and is still sneezing water. Quite proud of his three apples, though.
“Looks like it got stuck again,” Luna remarks. We all crane to watch people in the bottom carriages glare at Ivan, who’s experimenting with the buttons and apologizing drunkenly. Trevor and Teyonna, seated in the carriage at the very top, couldn’t be happier.
We pass a stage where a local garage band is making my teeth vibrate with bass, then a hayride wagon that I drag Morgan away from, coming to a stop in front of Gilda Halifax’s booth. She’s beaming in the midst of hundreds of individually wrapped traveler’s talismans, wearing a spangled silver muumuu and blue eye shadow that rolls all the way up to thin eyebrows painted on with a liner that’s closer to green than brown.
“Come get your talismans!” she’s crooning. “They’re my own special recipe, and I’m the only one alive who knows it. I’ve been baking these beauties since 1982!”
“She’s shameless,” Romina mutters darkly.
Luna crosses her arms. “Grandma’s going to haunt her for a month straight, after this.”
I shake my head. “Vile woman.”
We all step in line.
“Six, please,” I say sweetly.
“Ahh, it’s my girls , how very divine to see you.” Gilda smooshes Luna’s face between her bejeweled hands. “Come by Bowerbird’s Nest later, I’ve met a man online who’d be amazing for you. Name’s Denver. Quite young, in dog years. He carves puppets. They all bear a resemblance to his mother, but with a net worth of six million, we’ll let it pass.”
“I’ll talk to whoever you please if you’ll give me the traveler’s talisman recipe,” Luna replies.
Gilda scrunches her nose. “I couldn’t possibly. Family secret.”
“It’s supposed to be my family’s secret—” Luna begins, tersely, but Gilda’s already moved on to Romina.
“Darling, you’ve got to touch up your roots. They’re crying out for help. How do you like the hat I sent you? You’re such a doll, I can’t help it, every time I see a good hat I have to buy it for you.”
I brace myself when it’s my turn. “Zelda, you’re looking more and more like Baba Yaga every day.” Her eyes fill with sorrow. “But it isn’t too late for you. Let’s go shopping some time. Let me do something different with your hair.”
Gilda tells Alex that he needs to repaint his mailbox, and fawns over Morgan’s black opal rings before finally doling out our cakes. “I shouldn’t let you have this,” she tells Morgan. “We all know how much you like to harass us in E-flat.”
Morgan breaks his open, then immediately starts puffing on a whistle.
“I can’t believe you still put charms in them,” Alex disparages. “Isn’t that a health and safety violation?”
“Are you the fuzz, boy?” Gilda rejoins. “Mind your business.”
I unwrap my triangular cake, breathing in the sweetness of cinnamon, pumpkin, chocolate chips, and brown sugar. As I’ve done since I was a child, I take a nibble of each corner before splitting the talisman open to reveal my charm.
“You got the bell, too!” Romina shakes hers at me. “Twinsies.”
With traveler’s talismans, you get either a whistle or the bell of a jester’s hat. If you ring the jester’s bell in someone’s ear while they’re sleeping on Halloween night, the ringer and the sleeper are brought a week of laughter. If you get the whistle, you’re supposed to blow it before bed on Halloween night and your All Saint’s Day will be a lucky one. It’s tradition to give half your cake to a friend, to share the good fortune.
I devour mine in two bites, because I don’t share.
Luna studies Morgan as he whistles happily. “What does it feel like,” she says at my ear, “to be the sister who’s no longer running from love?”
My quizzical expression prompts her to add: “In the prophecy. Remember? When the silver luna moth makes its appearance, one of us will be running from love, one of us waiting for it, and the third will already be in over her head. Romina was the ‘in over her head’ sister, and I’m the one who’s been waiting for love.”
My lips press together, gaze sweeping over her face. Doesn’t she know?
Luna awaits my response, totally guileless. Hmm , poor woman’s in for a rude surprise.
My older sister thinks I’m the Tempest who’s been running from love, when I have, in fact, been waiting for it. Which means she’s the one running. And she has successfully convinced herself otherwise.
“Feels fantastic,” I finally reply, clearing my throat. “Can’t wait to watch when it’s your turn.”
Aisling runs up. “Mom! Can I take eight grams of cat’s claw bark from the herb drawer at home?”
Luna sighs. “Who are you trying to hex this time?”
“Not a hex. I need it for Samuel.”
I blow an involuntary raspberry. “What use does a ghost have for herbs? He can’t even touch them.”
She tips up her chin, defiant. “You’re the reason he needs more, thank you very much. You dropped all of Samuel’s cat’s claw bark into a cauldron.”
I muss her hair. “You and your imagination. Please never change, my darling.”
Luna and Aisling follow a path of glow-in-the-dark painted footprints toward home. Our shop is festooned in orange and purple fairy lights. Pumpkins, spider orchids, and scabiosa line the walkway.
I stoop to admire one of the pumpkins.
“These are the pumpkins that grew on top of my house,” Romina informs me. “Note how much bigger and orange-er they are than regular pumpkins.”
“You did not grow these.”
“Did too.”
“This one has a sticker from Moonville Market still on it.”
She picks the barcode sticker off. Pastes it to my forehead. “You think magic can’t grow pumpkins with stickers on them?”
I tap her flower crown playfully. “You’re right. There isn’t any evidence to prove it can’t.”
She preens.
There certainly is a surge of enchantment in the air tonight. I breathe deeply, my senses compressing it all into a memory I’m going to treasure every time magic resurrects it for me in the future: crisp air, sleeves again, leaves falling, the blush of golden hour, shop windows decorated with black cat decals, love potion number nine.
“My purse!” Romina cries, plucking at her boyfriend’s sleeve. “I must’ve dropped it. Quick, Alex, use your gift before somebody steals all my trail mix.”
“I don’t have a gift,” he insists. “I am not a witch.” He pauses, then points at The Sleepy Shrew. “You left it on the concession shelf.”
Romina shakes him. “ See? I told you.”
“Deductive reasoning! Not witchcraft.”
The two of them bicker, and I wind an arm around Morgan’s waist, leading us away to peace.
We switch on our EMF readers, as the veil is thin tonight, aiming them this way and that. Unfortunately, electromagnetic field detectors are easily triggered by cell phones. At the rate that ours are lighting up, it’ll be difficult to catch anything genuine. We stay close so that we don’t lose each other to environmental hazards (potholes hidden beneath rolling dry ice, children running amok on toy broomsticks, the beguiling come-hither of vendors who promise Morgan that he won’t regret trying deep-fried butter on a stick). We end up in a corn maze, where at last our readings normalize before blinking again.
“Red level five,” I report bracingly. “There’s got to be paranormal activity present.”
Morgan pats down his pockets. “Where’s my EVP recorder? I need this for the podcast!”
I’ve been a guest on Morgan’s podcast three times already. We don’t discuss paranimals publicly, as we don’t want them disturbed or experimented on by anyone, but I’m glad to recap late-night ghost hunting jaunts through town, hoping to cross an apparition.
“Over here, Hot Drama.” I follow the red flickers of my EMF reader, Morgan begins to narrate our current situation into his recorder, and we turn a corner only to find that Joan and Wanda, the ladies from the murder mystery dinner theater, have inadvertently set off our devices with their smartwatches.
“Damn it,” Morgan mutters.
“We’ll come back later, once everybody’s gone home,” I assure him. Just Morgan and me, skulking through the foggy shadows, inviting dead people to haunt us…Truly, if a more romantic date exists, I haven’t heard of it.
“Want to go forest for a while?” he suggests.
I grin at his usage of forest as a verb, and because he’s always itching to get back into the trees, just like me.
Hand in hand, we traverse the bridge over Foxglove Creek, fireflies shining on the water. Black trees beckon, bending toward us.
Zelda, Zelda. We have more for you.
“What will you bring me today?” I ask aloud. Sometimes I’m told my own stories, ones I’ve forgotten, and sometimes the ideas are new.
“ The Magician of More-Again ,” Falling Rock Forest whispers.
Morgan presses a kiss to my cheek. “Which has it begun?”
“?‘The Magician of More-Again,’?” I relay. He smiles broadly. Morgan is particularly fond of how that tale is progressing.
The Magician of More-Again, the fearsome Woodwitch, and their not-a-cat companion arrived at the Singing Mountains with less than seven minutes to spare.
“They finally made it to the mountains.”
Words push up against me like gusts of wind, impatient to get in as we enter the forest proper and become undergrowth.
Hills rolled up in waves, each one bigger than the last until they exploded into gigantic peaks that rang with otherworldly sound.
“When did you first know you were magic?” Sylvia asked him.
Morgan stops at a tree and spreads his jacket over the leaves. He seats himself, then extends a hand toward me. I grasp his fingers, my gaze holding his as he lowers me down beside him. Swallowed up in darkness, he trails a finger down my cheek, naked admiration on his face. I immediately pin the beauty through space, superimposing him onto this fictional magician the woods call Aries. How could I not? Morgan is the perfect muse.
Morgan reaches into our bag for his violin, to pass the time, and for my notebook, which he passes along. I fish a pen from my braid.
Begin to transcribe. My hand dashes across the page, hurrying to keep up. It feels exactly the way it did when I was a little girl, hunched over my notebooks: a bloom of elation, invention, infinite possibilities.
The Zelda of my childhood waves at me from the past, the two of us writing together. I’ve discussed a few story ideas with my literary agent and editor, and we’re all excited to create something new. I plan to have a first draft completed by the end of the year.
My eyes fall closed when Morgan begins to play “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” It’s the perfect song for this moment.
He pauses after the first few bars. “Can you see it?” he asks, his voice hushed.
“See what?” I whisper back, and—
Norway. Scrubby green fields with mountains in the distance, and all around us, a castle materializes. A vast grand hall wavers like it’s reflected in moving water, bright and merry with goblins, gnomes, and trolls so tall I can’t see their faces. A troll king is resting in his gilded chair, his right hand clutching a scepter topped with a crocodile’s head, an ostrich egg of a ruby in its open mouth.
As Morgan continues to play, more details appear in the scene: the clink of dishes upon two long tables, a ladle falling sloppily from its tureen of gravy; the crackle of enormous twin fireplaces on opposite sides of the room, chimney stones jutting in a zigzag pattern; the smell of roast swan, potatoes dripping buttery herb sauce, a fruit tart that wouldn’t fit in a human-made oven. Cheese and nuts; breads of such pillowy breadth and depth that I could sleep on them.
My vision hazes, tempo accelerating.
“Yes,” I breathe, emotions sharp in my chest. “I can see it.”
I can see the song.
I don’t know how he’s doing it, and from the wonder on his face, neither does he, but Morgan is playing magic.
He keeps playing, one song and then another and then the next, every single piece he knows until he’s run out and is making them up; all the while, the forest’s stories provide accompaniment and leaves blow down like rain, and I am so relieved to know that I am not even close to discovering all the best impossibilities rainbowing across the universe.
I think back to the Zelda of early summer, berating herself because the words wouldn’t come. Of course they wouldn’t come. They weren’t ready. Everything that I have now, all that I most treasure, arrived in the world on its own time.
He swathes us in luminous music that grows from his soul like the expanding branches of a tree, as I let go and write.
And drift into his lap to kiss him, here and there.
Once I reach the end of the third page, I turn back to the start; freckling in all the fundamental alliteration, lines with rhymes, and crooked door??s.
Did you know that there’s magic in Moonville? It bubbles within my coven like a heady brew, fortifying the threads that connect me to my sisters, my niece, my grandmother, my Morgan. It shimmers like his musical heartstrings, running as fast as it can through the forest in my bones. Into my fingertips. Pen. Ink as it gleams wetly onto paper that will someday disperse far and wide across a thousand different minds to recycle into new ideas, different energies, evoking a smile or a grimace, an altered mood—
And in that way, magic belongs to anyone who turns its pages.