“I can’t explain. It felt like I was looking at one type of animal, but a different type of animal was looking back at me. One hidden inside it.”
“You think it might be the Black Bear Witch? Or a paranimal. Like the squirrel that isn’t a squirrel?”
I’m not certain. Now that I think about it, I can’t quite remember what was wrong about the bear.
Nineteen
Will-o’-the-wisps have been known to lure many a lost traveler.
Legends and Superstitions, Expanded,
Tempest Family Grimoire
Things that can cause the appearance of bright light over water:
Moonlight reflecting off surfaces.
The mixture of marsh gas, decaying matter, and other natural gases.
Bioluminescent fungi, algae, etc.
Ball lightning.
Hallucination induced by lack of sleep, folie à deux.
Magic??
Hours later, on Lughnasadh proper, I join my family for their tradition of planting a fruit tree on Tiptop Hill. Great-Aunt Misty and her granddaughter, Nitya, spend the day with us. Nitya is known for denim on denim, jumpsuits, and statement jewelry: the red plastic necklace she’s blown into townwith this time is as big around as a steering wheel. Nitya wears her black hair in a beehive and an African gray bird called Odyssey, who likes to imitate her loud laugh, on her shoulder. Nitya is a nomad, like I used to be before I got tired of it, but she takes her role as Aisling’s godmother seriously and is always in Moonville for her birthday (and pops in every couple of months with interesting gifts for her).
“Shapes and colors,” Nitya is saying now to Morgan and Trevor. We’re in the shop, and I’ve been spacing out of the conversation as I obsess tiredly over the ball of light Morgan and I saw last night, jotting down my thoughts in a pocket-sized notebook. But atshapes and colors, I glance up.
She’s telling them about her gift.
“It first started happening when I was around ten,” Nitya goes on. “I’d be going about my day, when all of a sudden, all of the colors I could see turned gray, except for one. Like, my classroom would turn black and gray with the exception of anything red. Or I’d be reading a magazine, and anything in it that wasn’t blue would suddenly turn gray. It freaked me out. My dad took me to the doctor, but they couldn’t figure out what was causing it.”
Trevor is perched on the checkout counter. Morgan leans against it, entirely too close to me. A miniature Devil Zelda appears on my left shoulder and goes,Psst. You could touch him right now if you wanted to. A knee, an elbow.I flick her off, but she materializes on my right shoulder.What if you reach out and put your hand on his cheek? What’s stopping you? You have free will!
Morgan props a fist under his chin, engrossed in the story as I wage battle with my naughty impulses. “Then what happened?”
Nitya’s mindlessly drawing a portrait of me on the back of receipt paper, using a burning incense stick. “I was learning how to embroider one day, and all of the thread in my sewing basket turned grayscale except for a spool of light green. So I used the green to stitch a leaf onto my jacket. Once I was done with that leaf, my spool of green turned gray, and a different spool that had been gray suddenly turned pink. So I used the pink to stitch a flower to the leaf. On and on it went, until I ended up with a pattern of a tulip sprouting out of a teacup. Once I was finished with the last stitch, I felt this instant sense of protection, like whoever wore the jacket would be safe from any harm. And all the other colors came back. I realized this was my magical gift, and that I’m supposed to embroider spells.”
“What happens when you use the gray threads? Have you tried?”
She dips her head in a deep nod. “Any time I do that, it feels so wrong. It’ll feel like cold water’s dripping onto the top of my head, or like I’ve scraped the back of my ankle even when I haven’t, or suddenly, it’ll be as if I’m running through the airport terminal, right as the flight I’m supposed to be on takes off.”
I stare at her, thinking about last night when Morgan wanted to turn right and I sensed, down to my bones, that we should go left.
“We get that, too,” Romina tells him. “Luna and me. Not colors turning grayscale, but with our own magic, we gettactile sensations and relive bad memories when we’re not doing what magic wants. It’s like the magic is guiding us. When I’m picking flowers for a flora fortune and I choose one for a client that magic doesn’t agree with, it’ll force me to think about the time I was followed for two blocks by a hornet, or something to that effect. Then when I put the wrong flower down and pick up one that magic wants, I’m rewarded.”
“How? In what way?” I ask quickly. When Romina and Luna both turn their surprised expressions on me, I sniff and pretend to focus on my notes, hair falling forward in a tumble to conceal half my face. “Just curious, that’s all.”
“You’ve never asked about it before,” Luna remarks thoughtfully. But she then adds, “Good memories. Nice, happy images, like sipping hot chocolate during the first snow or how it feels when you’re at the movies and the lights dim, the previews finally starting. When I mixed just the right scents to make a candle yesterday, magic unlocked an old memory of when I was a little kid. Back when Grandma still lived upstairs, and where Ash’s bedroom is now, there was a sewing room with Dad’s bed and dresser from when he was young.” Luna’s eyes haze over as she peers into the memory. “I was standing behind Grandma as she opened a dresser drawer and took out a blanket to show me. It was Dad’s baby blanket, with his name stitched on. It smelled like a pine forest, so there must’ve been sachets in there. Then she took out clothes she used to wear in the seventies and let me try on a yellow silk nightgown. She liked showing me old things, telling me the stories behind them. There’s no way I could have remembered that on my own, without magic.”
“The lost memories are my favorite,” Romina says, smiling as she reminisces. “They’re always random, so it’s hard to say how magic finds these memories, why it chooses them specifically. Thanks to magic, I’ve remembered events that happened when I was only a baby. Before I even understood most words.”
My heart clenches with longing and jealousy. Could that happen to me? I want to remember long-ago moments with Grandma, too. It’s jarring every time I see Aunt Misty, because she so closely resembles Dottie. They have the same long, thin nose and drooping mouth. White hair. Sparse, rounded eyebrows that sit farther apart than their eyes do. I want to tell Nitya to stay home for a while, spend more time with her grandmother while she still can. Dottie and I talked on the phone all the time during my years away, but I wish we’d seen each other in person more.
I’m keen to hear if it might be possible for me to unlock good memories, but if I reveal my interest, they’ll ask questions. I debate how to go about casually digging for information, but by the time I’ve worked up the nerve, they’re back to talking about Nitya’s magical embroidery again.
