“I think he’s an alien,” Bushra muses to her brother.
“Forgot to use it, the first time around,” Morgan explains when he reemerges. “Saw myself in the mirror, got distracted again.” He claps. “Come on, it’s getting dark. Why’d you wait so long? Sunrise is the luckiest time of day!”
Twenty-Nine
For a productive tomorrow, sleep with powdered orris root and dried dill sprinkled beneath your bed.
Spells, Charms, and Rituals,
Tempest Family Grimoire
Every one ofmy neurons sparks with magic upon entering Falling Rock Forest. It feels exactly like the old comfort of settling into a pool of research needed to draft a scene. Contentedly spending hours learning the particulars of a small throwaway detail, like why over a thousand bones were found in Ben Franklin’s basement, or the history of Victorian postmortem photography.
“I’ll give you a cat’s-eye marble or a charm that fell off a dog collar. It’s the smoothest charm you’ll ever run your fingers over. And I can find any imaginary thing you like.”
I brush my fingers along Morgan’s wrist, and he reflexively curls his hand into mine. “Do you hear that?”
He listens. “Cicadas?”
I shake my head. “It’s that voice again.”
Diamonds left behind by a late-afternoon rain shimmer on the low stone walls running the forest’s edge, so timeworn that they’ve broken down in places to allow passage in and out. Onehas only to step inside, and the earth changes, Moonville becoming something much more like Villamoon, teeming with veiled possibilities.
“I don’t hear anything,” he tells me.
Trees creak and brush, welcoming us.Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, they breathe. I get the impression that they want to show me something.
Morgan pulls out Dottie’s crude map:BBW, Cave, Trestle, Falling Rock Triangle. “Which way? Wish your grandma had included a compass on this thing. There are loads of trestles in these woods, I bet. Any of them could be the trestle on the map.”
“…any imaginary thing you like. I have a real nose for them. Whether it’s a lemon pie with buttercream frosting, or a pony with six violet spots, or a one-armed chair that sings you to sleep, I can locate exactly where it’s hiding.”
As if in a daze, I follow the voice.
The moss carpet is thick with bluebells. Bioluminescent gold plants border a path that leads deeper into Falling Rock, igniting the gloam like a million settled cinders.“Invisible things are my specialty.”
The voice stops. I test every direction, but it seems that the invisible person who knows how to find invisible things no longer has anything to say.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper. “Whoisthat?”
“And why can’t I hear them?” Morgan swings around, his eyes enormous. “What if you’re like Aisling? What if you can hear ghosts?”
My jaw drops. “Whoa. Maybe?”
“This is excellent. I brought the Surefire—” He goes digging in his bag for Aisling’s traffic light.
“Hang on. If I can hear ghosts, then why have I never heard Grandma? Or…now that I think about it, I only ever hear voices when I’m in the woods.”
We grab for each other’s hands in excitement at the same time. “Brays!”
“You can hear spirits of all the people who died in these woods,” he says, awestruck. “That’s so creepy.”
“Itiscreepy,” I agree cheerfully.
“Good for you! What do you hear now?”
Crickets. Toads. I step carefully over the leaves, pleased by their dry crunch, stopping now and then to kick a half-buried stone out of the earth. Half-buried stones have always bothered me; I’m the same way with seeds in lemon wedges, watermelon slices. I can’t focus till I’ve picked them out.
Morgan holds the Surefire up, its yellow lens glowing gold through the fog, curling along, striking upon a bright white surface. “Do you see that?”
