“Want to go forest for a while?” he suggests.
I grin at his usage offorestas 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 merrywith 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: theclinkof 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.
