Rowan’s phone lit up.Mom: Where were you off to so early?
She hesitated a moment before typing back,Met up with Zaide for breakfast.
Mom: Would you mind working the info booth at the festival later?
Sure thing.It wouldn’t be her first time working at the festival. Before she’d left home, she spent most of her free time in December helping. Manning booths, assisting with repairs, assembling and disassembling things, running the children’s crafts—whatever needed to be done, someone from the Midwinter family was there to do it. Everyone pitched in. Everyone, that was, except Madeleine Midwinter, who abstained from large community gatherings.
Zaide pulled out a sketchbook and twirled a pen between her fingers.
“Is that more branding work?” asked Rowan, leaning over to steal a peek.
“Oh,” said Zaide, and her voice was small and quiet in a very un-Zaide-like way. “No, this is, um, well…”
She thrust the book Rowan’s way with no further explanation, eyes darting in the direction her father had gone. What could turn Zaide self-conscious?
The pages featured drawings in a heavy inky style. She’d been working on an athame plunged through an outstretched hand, alongside a delicate flower surrounded with Korean script.
Realization dawned. “Are these tattoos?” asked Rowan.
“They are indeed.”
“Are you thinking about becoming a tattoo artist?”
Zaide nodded, her energy zinging. “There’s this badass woman I’d love to apprentice with.”
Rowan continued to flip through more designs. “Do it. These are amazing.”
“It costs money. Money I don’t have, and besides…You know, showing my parents I had these was harder than coming out as a lesbianora witch? For a while, I actually…” She passed a hand down her arm, and her skin appeared momentarily tattoo-free in an apparently well-practiced spell. “Until one of my aunties saw it and forced me to tell before she did.” She sighed. “Saying I want to ruin other people’s bodies would not go over well.”
Rowan passed back the book. “So the whole ‘no tattoos’ thing is still big in Korean culture?”
Zaide nodded. “People get arrested for it. Younger people are moving on, but the older people, well, it’s complicated. They associate it with gang shit, but not like, gang shit we even chose. Gang shit that was forced on us.”
“That is thorny,” admitted Rowan.
“Thorny is right,” said Zaide.
After a moment, Rowan offered, “I’m sure they’d come around when they saw how good you were. I’d let you despoil this virgin skin.”
Zaide barked a laugh. “Thank you.” She rubbed the top of her journal, looking oddly vulnerable again. “I mean it. Naomie, she…she’s supportive, but I think she’s also worried about me causing a rift with my folks. Family’s everything to her. She’s been missing her parents a lot since they moved to New Mexico. Her abuela’s got a ranch, and she’s always showing me pictures of her family, and the horses, and…”
“I get it,” said Rowan. “But…you are also a part of your family. All of you. You shouldn’t have to be any less than who you are to be a part of it.”
“Maybe…” murmured Zaide, and then she clapped her hands. “We need a name.”
“A name?” asked Rowan, caught off guard by the sudden change in subject.
“For this operation. It’s tradition.” It was true. They’d always named their schemes. In order to get the school to stock free menstrual products, they’d planted tampons painted red in the men’s staff bathrooms for weeks, until finally their efforts bore fruit. They’d called it Operation Red Tide.
“What about…” said Rowan. “Operation Holly and Ivy?”
“I like it,” said Zaide. And that was it. The mission to save Elk Ridge Winter Fest was formal enough to have a name. It felt goodto be working with someone again, especially when that someone was Zaide.
Rowan glanced in Zaide’s direction. “So…you and Naomie?”
A dreamy smile spread across Zaide’s face. “Me and Naomie.”
“Did you two get together before or after you started practicing?”
