Page 7

Imri

“This room looks good. You sure you want Sandy and Berry to share it? There’s room to give them one each.”

Uncle Malik’s old house was… surprising. What appeared to be a ramshackle home was actually one under expansion. I think he’d begun making space for Rowan and his family long before his symptoms worsened. It’s what I would have done.

Unfortunately, while the shell, electrics and plumbing were mostly okay, the weather had caused a leak in the roof, which in turn, had damaged some of the interior walls, meaning we had to replace them. Rowan had already patched the roof, so the place was watertight.

With Rowan, and even Sandy and Berry pitching in, we’d gotten two bedrooms and a bathroom done. The kitchen was nearly there. It needed redecorating, but it was serviceable for the time being.

“We will all share until another bedroom is ready for me. They don’t want to be separated.” It had taken a lot for Rowan to tell me no. He often went along with what I thought best instead of voicing an opinion, so I had to respect him for speaking up for his siblings.

“Alright. The beds should be here in a day or two. Will you be okay until then?”

I’d made a run into Haenvale, braving the stares of the residents, the night after they came for mac and cheese. It was a firm favorite with the young ones. I’d gone to get blow up mattresses for the trailer and some better, kid friendly snacks. Yeah, it was a tight fit as I’d predicted, but I didn’t feel right about letting them return to their home deeper in the woods.

Rowan was tired. That first night, I’d ended up with both Sandy and Berry sharing my bed with me in my dingo form. They’d sort of imprinted on me, I guess. We shared an instant connection. They felt like mine even though they were witches and not shifters. Seeing his siblings so content and feeling safe for what had to be the first time in a long time, Rowan slept deeply on the tattered couch covered in a blanket Mom had made for me in college. He was out for like twelve hours straight.

While he rested, I got the little ones up and made them breakfast. When their brother woke, they left my trailer to get their things, promising to return. I told them I was going to get some things to make them more comfortable and to make themselves at home if I wasn’t there when they got back.

Let me tell you, it was something special to see the three of them with all their possessions waiting for me. I’m not ashamed to admit I nearly cried over it. Rowan had even started taking in the sheets of drywall, informing me in a no nonsense tone, that a summer rainstorm was predicted. He was right, and the boards would have been useless if it wasn’t for him.

The day after that, I took them to the next town over to get them new clothes. The twins had gone through a growth spurt, outgrowing pretty much everything. They hadn’t enjoyed traveling in the truck. Berry got sick, which I’d prepared for with a plastic bucket and bottles of water to wash it out. Sandy kept asking if I was giving them away. It broke my heart.

“I’ll never give you up. You’re my family now. All of you,” I swore with all I had. We’d gone to just one store, getting the essentials, then returned to the house to reassure them they were safe with me.

Malik had known I’d love them as my own as soon as I met them. My heart ached when I thought about him preparing to go into the hospice and leaving them behind. I couldn’t imagine how guilty he felt in those last months, but he’d done the right thing. Those kids would have been taken from him straight away if they’d been discovered. He had done everything he could to ensure their safety, aside from what most would have considered the best thing to do: alert the authorities.

We hadn’t discussed it, me and Rowan, but I know he would have fought like hell to stay with the kids and out of social services hands if Malik had told anyone.

There was no telling what they would have done to him with his unstable magic. At ten, the twins, I’d just found out, weren’t sparking with magic at the same rate as Rowan. He confessed late one night he thought about taking them into town and leaving them for a family to find. They could have the normal life he was denied.

Rowan cried as I held him, calling himself selfish for keeping his family together when they were his only reason for living. His magic wasn’t even that bad. My anger over how he lived burned hot within me. I hated the town for making these kids so scared. Rowan was impressive, not scary. There was nothing selfish about him.

To protect us, he’d laid wards all around the property. It gave us all a measure of security knowing we would be alerted if anyone broke the rules and ventured too close to the house. How many practically untrained witches could do something so complex?

Another thing, he and the kids hadn’t just survived, they’d thrived. These weren’t dirty, unkempt, uneducated, and starving children. No, thanks to Uncle Malik, they’d continued learning about the world. They had clean clothes. Rowan knew how to use the washer they had at the home they’d once shared with their mom. Rowan grew their fruit and vegetables. They kept chickens until a fox got them. He’d used solar panels and a wind turbine for power to light and heat their home and power their fridge. He recharged their crystals with magic in the darker months. They made things work for them .

Meeting me just made life easier. They could play more, spend more time reading books and doing math. Sandy was great at math. Berry was great at growing things.

“She helped me so much in the garden,” Rowan said with a smile as he watched his little sister water the plants.

“Berry’s a wonder.”

Yeah, Berry was already transforming the vegetable patch in our yard. She was remarkable. They all were.

In a week we went from strangers to family. At thirty-five, I’d been ready to settle down. Adopting three kids, well one young adult and pre-teen twins, wasn’t what I’d had in mind, yet fate was a tricky thing, and I truly felt like we were meant to find each other.

Still I found myself looking out into the woods.

There was a jingling sound.

“Imri? That’s the delivery sound. Want me to come with you to the mailbox?” Rowan offered. The kid was barely an adult and more mature than anyone I’d ever met his age.

“Sure.” I called out to tell Sandy and Berry we’d be back. Sandy was reading under a leafy tree and Berry was weeding the garden.

We walked in silence for a little while. The mailbox was quite a distance from the house, close to a mile maybe. There was a cart for us to carry things on that Rowan had found for me.

“Thank you for making things so nice for my family. I’m grateful Uncle Malik sent you to us.” I loved how they referred to him as Uncle Malik. He was as much their family as he was mine. It kept him with us in spirit.

“So am I. We’re family now…” I paused for a moment, thinking of how to word what I wanted to say. “I’d like to make it formal. We can get documents made… My mama knows someone who can forge papers and we can make it like I took over a while ago. Pretend you weren’t alone, if you like.”

“My magic—“

“Really isn’t bad and I think Mom might know some witches who could train you.” He looked worried. “We can afford a tutor. If you want that, I mean,” I assured him. “This isn’t me trying to get rid of you. I want to adopt you all. This way, if we do it so it happened years ago, then you were young enough for me to adopt.”

“Adopt us? All of us?” Rowan’s face was alight with happiness. “Yes! I would like that. ”

“Do you think Sandy and Berry will agree, too?”

“They love you already. Even with Uncle Malik, they kept some distance. As soon as they saw you, they let their guards down.”

Warmth spread in my heart at how easily they all accepted me.

Working as a team, we got the beds back to the house and then set up in their room.

“I think I’d like to share with them a little longer. Can we focus on the dining room or living room instead?”

“Rowan, you’re still sleeping on the floor!” I said, aghast. “I think I’d rather get you your own space set up before we do anything else. Please, you need your own space. A bed at the very least!”

“But—“

“Why don’t we try and see if we can fit another bed in here? Or hell, I’ll stay out in the camper and you can have my room. You need a proper bed, Rowan.”

“No!” he was quite insistent. “You can’t! I’ll help you get my room ready,” he relented. “I won’t sleep on the floor. Sandy will share with Berry and I will sleep in his bed. ”

“Okay. Our next job is your room because your bed is due in a few days.” I grinned, happy I’d gotten my own way and I’d been able to reveal my surprise.

“What?”

“I saw the one you liked and bought it.”

Rowan never asked for anything for himself, so when his eyes kept straying to a queen sleigh bed when we were out shopping, I’d made sure to order it for him.

“Thank you,” he said quietly and full of feeling. His hug was brief, but tight. Rowan wasn’t the most physically demonstrative with me, which was fine, I got it. He’d been an adult for a long time.

Later that night, I tucked the twins into the same bed while Rowan read in the bed next to the window, a lamp on the table next to him for when it got dark. He held a power crystal in his hand, siphoning some of his magic into it. Rowan found charging stones helped him spark less.

Once down, I said goodnight, then went to the peaceful bedroom we’d worked on for me. All the work getting our rooms ready had exhausted me. I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow after my brief shower .

What felt like only an hour later, but was actually closer to dawn, Rowan woke me by nudging my shoulder.

“Imri? Imri, wake up!”

“What is it?” I asked around a yawn.

“Something tripped my alarms.”

I was alert instantly. “Okay, where?”

He explained they were just outside the boundary of the property, close enough to need our attention if someone was coming to harm us.

“Stay here with the others. Don’t wake them, they’ll only worry. I’ll go shifted.”

Rowan followed me down the creaky stairs and through the kitchen to the back door. There, I stripped off my clothes, laughing at Rowan’s blush.

“If you’re gonna be my kid, you have to get used to me shifting. We’re all born naked.”

My dingo form fell over me quickly. On four legs, I trotted out into the yard and to the boundary of the property. I hopped over the drooping fence, something we really needed to fix soon, and then caught a scent.

The pull towards it was overpowering! The smell of almonds and sugar. It took me a little while to locate the source of the scent.

A little rodent-like creature was sleeping under a bush! Nothing terrifying, not the townspeople coming to get us for having unregulated witches, just a lost little beast. There was this urge to play with it, not hunt, which struck me as odd.

Damn, it was cute. Its little nose twitched and it looked like it was smiling while it slept. I nosed at it gently, trying to rouse it from its sleep. It wasn’t safe for such a little thing to be sleeping alone in the open like it was.

Suddenly, its eyes flew open. It made a startled sound. A sort of high-pitched squeal of panic and fear at my scent. Then it flipped around, scrambling out from under the bush it had slept under.

Hopping away from me a little, it paused, looking hesitantly at me for the briefest of moments.

In a second, it was gone. I felt a need to chase and hunt, my instincts rising before I pushed them down. Still, I needed to make sure it left the woods and stayed away from the house.

I followed the little beast until I realized my pursuit of it was making it terrified. I could smell its terror and pain .

All I could do was stop, drop back, and follow at a greater distance. On four legs, where I was better able to see in the dark, I trailed it all the way to the road, where the shifter took his human form.

He took off at a run then, limping slightly from his injured foot.

In seconds, he was gone from sight, making me feel a sense of longing.

Who was he?