Page 81 of Witchbane

My tiny kitchen was complete, fridge and cooktop looking as I remembered. My prep space was full, ingredients for several dishes and containers to store them in spread all over, there was a basket at my feet. One I’d used a few times in the past. The thought stuttered for a second or two as I could see out my windows into the forest that surrounded my camper, and the world was dark.

While I was obviously packing for a picnic, I couldn’t recall the details. Vaguely, I remembered sometimes having an evening picnic under the stars. But I struggled to remember the last time I had, and why. Was I meetingApa? He didn’t normally have the patience for silly things like picnics even during the day. And at night it seemed more romantic, intimate. Was I meeting a lover?

I paused in my meal prep to take out the other bread and tried to sort through the confusion. Odd how there seemed to be a wall in my memory. Like I could almost see someone’s face. I had to be planning to meet a lover then. Why couldn’t I recall their name or what they looked like? A glance around the camper indicated there were no pictures anywhere, no sign of anyone but me living there. But the basket at my feet and the containers full of food said I was meeting someone.

The bed against the back wall was made. Clean lines piled with blankets. Maybe I hadn’t slept in a few days.

Seb.

I turned, as if expecting someone at the door, yet I knew that was impossible. The door was shut, locked, and I heard nothing from outside. But I went to it anyway and opened it, staring through the storm door out into the darkness as though expecting someone to be there. The path to my newly crafted garden was clear and empty.

With no one outside, I shut the door and returned to the packing of the basket. Sandwiches finished, sliced, and stored, I added the leftover bread to reusable bags, and had to pause for a moment over the feel of the bread. A memory was stirring as if it were half formed. A bakery? I could recall a machine that cut perfect slices and then rolled the crafted bread into a bag and tied it expertly. Like I’d done it a thousand times before. But there was no machine in my camper. And I’d never been inside a real bakery. Or had I?

I stared at the bread, brain working slowly, like it was covered in honey, thick, cool, and sticky. Why did the bread give me pause? I’d made bread a lot in my life. It wasn’t my favorite thing to do, as I’d rather have crafted a delicate sponge cake with French meringue frosting and fresh strawberries folded between the layers.

Had someone requested this bread, cranberry walnut? Neither things I used in cooking at all.

I rubbed my forehead like that would put things in order. Something in my gut told me we were running out of time. I had to be somewhere. And that made sense if I had promised to meet someone. I wish I could recall who.

I finished packing the basket, cleaned the counters, put everything away and lifted the food to head toward the door. If I was meeting someone I knew where it would be. A bit of a hike from my camper was a little clearing with a delicate circle of mushrooms. I’d joked about them a few times, some of my reading come to memory about faery rings of power and the like. But it felt like everything else felt, like the earth, nature, and home.

I locked my camper door and then reinforced the ward. It had been muscle memory, an instant reaction from stepping outside rather than something I really decided to do. I stood staring at the door and my camper for a few minutes, trying to recall how I knew wards like that at all.

What was wrong? Why did everything feel off?

The sound of the woods around me echoed with birds and bugs, and an occasional squirrel scurrying through the brush. The night sky shone clear and bright with the pinprick of thousands of stars. The breeze caressed my skin in delicate warmth familiar from my lifetime of Texas evenings.

I headed toward the spot, every step forward adding dread to my gut. Twice I almost turned back, thinking I’d go back to the camper and wait. Someone would come get me. If I was meant to meetApa,he’d appear at my door sooner or later. But it was silly to be afraid of my own backyard. The wolves kept their distance, claiming I had magic I’d never known. I waswitchblood, cursed from birth, they mumbled. The bane of the wolves.Bane of life,came a distant thought that didn’t feel like my own.

I stopped again. Startled by the feeling of someone else in my head, as too obviously not my own thought, so that I mentally chased it for a moment. But it faded, vanishing as though it had never happened.

I caught the glimpse of a child with red hair in my memory. For a second I thought it was me, but that wasn’t right. My eyes were brown, not one blue and one brown. How?

Chasing that memory did no good either, so I headed for the meeting spot hoping for answers.

The spot was dark and vacant. And oddly, the mushrooms were gone. Not gone so much as dead. The few that remained crunched underfoot as I’d missed them when I entered the clearing.

The ground looked a bit more barren than I remembered, browned, grass dry and dead. Maybe it was summer? It didn’t feel hot enough to be summer as even then evenings could be scorching. The last bits of fungus appeared as if it had been burnt, the black bits little more than crumbs scattered into the dirt.

I set the basket down, and everything was oddly silent. Like it had all been startled. Usually I moved quietly enough that the world went on around me. Was someone else coming?

I didn’t hear anyone moving either. My night vision was good enough with the half moon glowing overhead to see for quite a distance, even through the trees. Nothing moved.

For a few seconds I awkwardly stood there, shifting my weight from foot to foot, debating what to do. Was I late? Why was I even here?

I stared down at my arms, which were bare, as I seemed to be wearing a tank top or something with very short sleeves. I traced my fingers down my skin, which was dark in the pale moonlight and unblemished, and that felt wrong. Had I been injured and the scar was gone?

A brief flash of stitches curling from my thigh up toward my stomach flickered through my head like snapshots from a Polaroid camera. Bright and burning as they faded and vanished when I tried to follow the memory. That sort of wound could have gutted me. I put my hands to my stomach as though searching for the wound and expecting it to be there bleeding, fresh and raw.

Nothing.

A crack of a stick echoed in the distance. Someone was coming. The person I was supposed to meet? Yet my entire body clenched with tension and fear.

Apa? The weight of his shadow touched the edge of my memory. The first glimpse of it as a child and then something else, facing me down in rage, while I stood before him, human, begging him to come back to me. What? Where? When had that happened? Then there was a memory of something monstrous, dragon-like, yet grotesque. A glimpse of obsidian stone locking the horrors of it in place. My heart flipped over with fear.

Had that thing been him? How was that possible? Where was that memory from? Like some insane gothic carving placed on display, the snapshot of it peppered my memory with sadness rather than detail.

Every time a new thought popped up; it was as if someone slapped it away before I could really grasp it. Pieces of a puzzle thrown aside before I could find their place.