I turn my focus on the water but can’t seem to connect to it. That is until the room turns red and my father appears in front of the fireplace. I grin. “My dad’s here.”
Daddy smiles, and my heart swells. I miss him so much. His silver eyes twinkle at me.
“Can you teach me how to move the water?”
He approaches me on the opposite side as my mother did, and I feel his energy flow into me. A hair-thin web appears between me and the water. He twirls his finger, and I picture that movement in my mind. The water circles in the bowl.
“Good,” Maeve says. “Now the pot. If you’re feeling strong enough.”
I am. The vibration of my father’s energy, so much slower and more even than my mother’s, flows through me. I watch in wonder as a thread forms between me and the pot. And then a green shoot rises in the center of the earth. Two leaves sprout from a scrawny stem.
“Wow, Eloise, you really are?—”
Passing out is inevitable. At some point of practicing magic, my body just gives up and my head hits the sofa cushions. But each day I’ve been able to do more. By Friday night, after Maeve revives me once again, I’m feeling pretty good about what I’ve learned and my rate of improvement. We sit at the kitchen table, scarfing pizza from Echo Mills’ one and only pizza place, Slice of Home, and I already feel stronger, like I could try again. I know I’m recovering more quickly than before and definitely am able to do more on my own without the help of the spirits who come to train me.
“I think the pizza has gotten better since we were kids,” I say around the bite in my mouth.
“Yeah, it only took them twenty years to get the crust right.” Maeve sinks her teeth into another slice.
“So…” I sip my iced tea and swallow. “I’m a medium, I guess.” The question of how to define my magic has popped up before in my head. Am I a witch like my mother and father? A spiritualist like my great-grandfather? A magical mutt?
Maeve snorts. “You are far more than a medium, Eloise. I think we’ve completely misunderstood your sigil up until now.”
“How so?”
“Your parents told you your sigil was a key. We assumed they meant that it unlocked a portal to the underworld, which it did. We focused on the portal part, not the underworld part.”
“Right.”
“You can, presumably, transport yourself and, again presumably, transport others to the underworld and then jump from the underworld to anywhere else. But maybe we’ve been viewing your sigil too narrowly. Maybe that’s just one way you can use it.”
“You think there’s more?”
She takes my hands. “I think your real power is in channeling magic from beings in the underworld and using it as your own. Think about it like this. You are the key, not to a portal but to a doorway, and as long as you hold that door open, you can allow what’s on the other side through. Your family members are the easiest for you because they want to help you. But potentially you could tap into the power of any dead witch or wizard if you practiced long enough. And if I’m right, the name for your brand of power is spirit magic.”
“Spirit magic?”
“Yes. I’ll be honest, I’m a little out of my element here. The Gowdies, we animate things. Nothing we work with includes souls. I’m not sure exactly how it works. It could be the clock or the house itself that allows the spirits to interact with you, but it seems more likely to me that you yourself hold the power and are simple using the clock as an anchor or a brace to support all that magic coming though from the other side. And if that’s the case, we should be able to move your anchor so that you can practice magic outside these walls. In fact, I think we should try practicing somewhere else.”
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m certainly willing to try.” I try to wrap my head around everything she just told me. It’s a lot but not altogether surprising. “Maeve, I think you’re right about unlocking the passage, but I wonder if maybe it’s, like, always open when I’m here.”
“Why would you say that?
“I, um, recently learned that my ancestors have been more involved in my life than I originally thought.”
“What do you mean?”
I point at the spider plant hanging over the sink. “I have never watered that plant.”
Slowly she stands up and touches the soil. Her brow peaks. “It’s wet.”
I nod. “Also, I thought my grandmother had hired landscapers to tend the yard. Well, she had, but they stopped after she died because they were doing it on a volunteer basis to help her. I didn’t realize they’d stopped until I ran into the owner at the grocery store and he asked if I’d consider using him again. Someone has been maintaining the grounds, Maeve, and it isn’t me.”
“Shit. And they didn’t start doing all that until you moved in here.”
“I think… it didn’t start until the day the eye of the dragon opened.”
She squints at me.
